The French Kiss Job
by quirkapotamus
Summary: Three months after Nate and Sophie's retirement from Leverage Consulting & Associates, Parker, Eliot, and Hardison are struggling to work on their own more than anyone expected. Eliot sees the writing on the wall, but Parker and Hardison convince him to meet with one last client. Is this the job that will save the team, or the one that will finally break them? (Phantom Season 6)
1. Chapter 1

_This is the "Season Premiere" of my personal take on the phantom Season 6. Our story begins with a focus on Parker, Eliot, and Hardison, but rest assured that Nate and Sophie aren't gone forever. _

_Spoilers through the end of the series. See my profile for disclaimers._

* * *

**Chapter 1**

_Parker_

The light on the keypad changed from red to green. Easy peasy.

Sure, some companies had Sterankos, but then others would have easy fingerprint scanners like this one. Parker wasn't one hundred percent sure which one she preferred. Sometimes it was nice to play with the harder security systems, but she didn't always have time to give them the love and tender care they deserved. She already looked forward to her next vacation-those were the times when she could afford to hang around, cracking safes for fun. But whenever she was on a job for the Leverage team, there was always someone in her ear telling her to hurry up.

Literally.

"Parker, you gotta move," came Hardison's voice over the comm. "Next guard shift comes through in twenty seconds."

"Twenty seconds?" Parker barked a quick, delighted laugh. "That's like forever!" She removed her thumb from the scanner and peeled off the film to which Stanley Singer's perfectly-preserved fingerprint had been transferred from a champagne flute.

"Not when you're - oh! Oui, monsieur." Hardison suddenly shifted into his best French accent. Singer must have returned from the open bar. "I can assure you zat my employer will be here momentarily."

"No you can't," said Eliot. "I need another minute. Stall him."

"You ain't got another minute, man," murmured Hardison under his breath. "Guy's about to walk on out. Get your butt up here."

"I'm a little _busy_, Hardison!"

"What the hell you doing that's taking so long, huh?"

Eliot didn't say anything, but the familiar sound of his fist connecting with someone's face made the answer clear. That wasn't good. Eliot wasn't supposed to be beating people up for at least ten more minutes.

Parker pulled the door of the vault open and slipped inside, sprinting to the far wall, a mosaic of foot-square locked doors. She withdrew the master key they'd copied yesterday from the band of her hat and began opening each door as quickly as possible. They hadn't been able to get a straight answer on which compartment contained their objective, so, worst-case-scenario, she'd have to open them all.

It was a worst-case-scenario type of day, apparently.

"Eliot…" Hardison's tone was uneasy. "Seriously. I need you up here now. He's giving me a look."

"A look? What kind of look?"

"You know. A look. With his…you know, his eyes and - Eliot, for real, could you just - just get up here, man!"

"I can't, Hardison!" More sounds of scuffling and Eliot choking someone out. "There's guys at the back entrance we didn't know about." He grunted, probably taking a hit, but from the groans that followed, Eliot paid it back with interest. Finally, he said, "Okay. On my way."

Hardison audibly sighed in relief.

Parker's own relief at opening the final door on the wall, however, abruptly dissipated. "Uhhhh, guys?"

"What?" they asked in unison.

"It's not here." She paused. "I repeat, the circuit board is not here."

"Heard you the first time," growled Eliot. "Hardison? What's the play?"

"What's the play? We're already on plan H!"

"Well, it's not here," said Parker. "So I'm getting ou - " She turned to go, but froze. The guards on their round had caught up - three of them, guns drawn, blocking the exit. "Well," she said, forcing a smile as she considered her options. "That was a fast twenty seconds."

Hardison sputtered. "Wha - Parker? Parker?"

"The guard shift," said Eliot, swearing a little under his breath. "All right. I'm going to get her. Hardison, get out of there and get to the rendezvous. We're blown."

"No - guys - we can't just -"

"Hardison! It's over."

"I'm sorry, Alec," said Parker quietly. "We can't do it."

The comms were silent for a moment.

"All right," said Hardison. He took in a heavy breath. "All right. I'm calling it. Eliot…get her out of there safe."

"Always do."

Hardison's end of the comm devolved into a flurry of apologies and excuses to the mark. Hopefully he would manage to get away okay. Right now, Parker had her own company to deal with.

"Hi," she said cheerily. "You guys must be security! And I bet you'd like an explanation for this, right? Well, I've got one. Yup. Sure do…" She held up her hands and shrugged, muttering out the side of her mouth, "Eliot?"

"Almost there. Just keep their attention."

She coughed. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Make something up, Parker! This ain't your first rodeo."

"Ooh. Good idea!" She flashed another smile at the guards and mimed tipping an imaginary cowboy hat. "Sorry to disturb you cattlerustlers. Had a bull out of his pen. You know how it is." She tried to muster up some spit for a loogie, but didn't turn out well, so she went back to talking. "Anyway, I'm with the, you know, the ranchers association."

They all blinked for a second.

"Wait, what?" said the guard in the middle.

The one on the left shrugged.

"Ma'am," said the one on the right. "We're going to have to ask you to come with us."

"But…but…but the cows!" exclaimed Parker. "We have to find the cows!"

The guards all looked at each other.

"I think she might be mentally unbalanced," said the one in the middle.

"You're not far off," said Eliot from behind them.

The guards turned in unison, but before they could raise their guns again, Eliot had knocked them out cold, two of them with his fists and one with the point of his elbow.

"Owwie," said Parker with a little shrug and an impish smirk.

Eliot narrowed his eyes at her as she crossed the room. "The ranchers association? Are you kidding me? How many times I gotta tell you -"

"You can't fake country?"

Eliot stuttered in his obvious irritation. "Y-yes!"

"I know." Parker gave a quick little shrug. "I just wanted to confuse them. Worked, right?"

He rolled his eyes and grabbed her hand to pull her down the hallway. "Whatever. C'mon. We've gotta go."

Hardison was waiting with Lucille 4.0 at the back entrance and frantically motioned to them as they exited the building. "Come on!" No sooner had they jumped in than he peeled away from the curb, Lucille's tires smoking.

For the first few blocks, Parker peered through the back window. "Doesn't look like we have a tail."

"Good," muttered Eliot. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "At least something went right today."

"Excuse me?" said Hardison. "We were four-fifths of the way through that con! A lot of things went right -"

Eliot glared at the back of Hardison's headrest. "Yeah, but it don't mean anything if you can't close the damn case!"

"Well maybe I would have closed it if you hadn't taken your sweet time with those back entrance guards!"

"Hey!" Eliot jabbed his finger threateningly at the air. "You didn't say anything about guys back there. There were five of them, by the way. So you're welcome."

"For what? For blowing our cover?"

"STOP IT!" yelled Parker. They did, and looked at her. "Just…stop. We don't have to fight." She hugged herself and sighed. When they'd stopped the bio-bomb plot in DC, their teamwork had been so good that no one ever doubted that the three of them could keep Leverage Consulting & Associates going on their own, even down a mastermind and grifter. But the past few months hadn't really borne out those expectations. The truth was… "I miss Nate and Sophie."

* * *

_Eliot_

Back at headquarters - still located above the Portland Bridgeport Brew Pub as it had been when Nate and Sophie were around, despite Hardison's continued insistence that the new and improved "Leverage International" would relocate to the safety of a major European city any day now - Parker and Hardison went straight upstairs, but Eliot flipped the sign in the restaurant's door to "Closed" and poured himself a pint of their house India pale ale behind the bar. He nursed it as he tried very hard not punch a hole in the wall.

Today had been a disaster. Frankly, the last three months had been one ongoing disaster. This was the first time they hadn't managed to limp through a job to completion, but nothing about their current efforts to keep Leverage afloat was remotely up to the standards of the five-man-band days. For one thing, they were taking on fewer clients, but somehow still doing a worse job. Their cons were getting sloppy, more smash-and-grab than elegant. The rich and powerful abusers of power that Leverage was known for taking down weren't getting punished in perpetuity; mostly they were just getting robbed.

A huge part of the problem was that now there were only three of them. Three, compared to five, was a lot harder to spread over the variety of roles needed to pull off the cons that could take down whole corporations. Just like today, Eliot couldn't simultaneously be beating up guys downstairs and playing a part for the mark upstairs. When they'd first gotten their hands on the Black Book, they'd assumed that teams around the globe would want to use it to get the people who'd "broken the world," as Nate had put it. But they hadn't counted on most criminals still acting like…well…criminals. Fat cats were being targeted, but not for any altruistic reason, and none of what was taken from them was given back to the little guy if Parker, Hardison, and Eliot weren't behind it. So they'd stopped giving away the Black Book's contents, and they weren't getting any more extra help. At one point, Hardison had joked about holding "auditions" to solve their numbers problem. But, unfortunately, bad-guys-gone-good-guys were in short supply, and Tara Cole didn't come cheap.

Which brought them to the issue that none of them was a bonafide grifter. Not that they couldn't play roles or play them well - they could - but Eliot's first instinct was still to hit, Hardison's to hack, and Parker's to steal. Without a grifter around, it was harder for the rest of them to justify the grifting, which was ultimately the glue that really held their diverse skills sets together, the one thing they all had in common. So instead of working together like a well-oiled machine, Eliot saw them drifting back to the way they'd been when they'd first met: a group of people who worked alone.

Maybe worst of all, Eliot found himself chafing under Hardison's leadership. Before walking away, Nate had actually tapped Parker to take on his "mastermind" role for the team - and she did have a talent for piecing together the parts of a con - but when they'd begun their war as a trio, it had quickly become apparent that what Parker wasn't as talented at was _leading_. She liked the big picture, but she wasn't good at explaining it or directing it tactically. That was where Hardison's ability to communicate had become important. Unfortunately, even the shift to Hardison on point hadn't fixed their problems.

When Nate had been the obvious captain, and Sophie his second in command, the team's next move had always been clear. If Nate said they were going to do something, they did it, even if they didn't agree with it. Eliot had personally disagreed with Nate's decisions more often than might have been good for the rest of the team to know, but Nate had been the coach, and they, as players, had to trust him to call the plays. Nate had also demanded respect, expected it, and everything he did made that clear. Hardison, while a natural leader and supposedly chomping at the bit to run his own crew, couldn't seem to decide whether he wanted to be in charge of _this_ crew or not. He wasn't confident and consistent; instead, he was constantly second-guessing his decisions. At the same time, he put enormous pressure on himself to perform and bristled whenever Eliot said or did something that could be interpreted as "critical." There was a look in Hardison's eye every time they took on a new client - the "What would Nate do?" look. Eliot saw it slowly driving him crazy. And that was driving Eliot crazy.

He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a deep breath. He hated that he was beginning to resent some of the only friends he had. How could things have gotten so outrageously awful in such a short amount of time?

All because Nate and Sophie were gone.

He downed the last of the beer and rinsed out the glass. It wasn't fair to blame Nate and Sophie for leaving. They'd done enough good in the world for fifty lifetimes, helped hundreds of people who couldn't help themselves. They deserved happiness, a life together that wasn't built around swindling people out of their money and possessions and reputations, even if those people were the scum of the earth.

All the same, Eliot would have done anything to get them back. Not just for the sake of the cons, but for the sake of the team. Because, at this rate, they weren't going to be a team much longer.

Of course, sitting around drinking wasn't accomplishing anything. But it was nice to have a moment alone, just him and the pub. Eliot had found he did some of his best thinking here. It was too bad they'd almost certainly have to leave it behind, now that this job had been left open-ended. It was one thing to show themselves during a con when the mark was discredited or arrested, rendering any testimony against them harmless. But they hadn't dealt the death blow. At any time their faces could be all over Portland.

"Dammit," he muttered, and put the glass back under the bar.

He took the stairs two at a time. Hardison and Parker had apparently already had the same thought as him. They were trotting around with duffel bags, stuffing all manner of things into them. Parker had one bag completely full of Euros. And was that another crammed just with Jolly Ranchers?

Hardison put three external hard drives into a briefcase as he finished typing something into his laptop with the other hand. He looked up as Eliot walked in.

"Hey, man. Look, about earlier -"

"Forget about it. Let's focus on getting out of here."

Hardison smiled sadly, lips pressed together. "I've got us all booked on different flights. You know, typical escape plan. You want Tokyo, Sydney, or -"

"Why are we splitting up?" interrupted Parker. She set down the bags she was carrying and walked over, arms crossed. "Why do we always split up?"

"Because it keeps us safe," said Hardison. "We're harder to track down when there's just -"

"I don't think that's true," said Parker. Her brow furrowed. "I think we're safer together. We can't look out for each other if we split up."

"Parker…" Eliot began.

"No!" Parker's eyes flashed. "No, I'm not going to do it. We can't fall apart. We can't. You promised. You promised Nate and Sophie -"

"That was _then_, Parker!" said Eliot.

Hardison was looking down at his hands. "We didn't know it would turn out like this."

Eliot tried to take a little of the edge out of his voice. "Parker, it's not working with just the three of us. We can't pull off the same kinds of jobs. Maybe it's time we went back to what we're good at. What we know."

Parker was frowning, surprisingly emotional. "Well maybe you think you can go back, but I can't." She shook her head vigorously. "I don't want to give up. I won't."

Maybe the tough love approach was going to be the only one that got through to her. Eliot didn't like the thought of deliberately hurting Parker's feelings, particularly when he himself wasn't keen on the notion of giving up and parting ways any more than she was, but it was the only thing that made sense. The way things had been going, they needed to cut their losses before they got arrested…or worse.

It was his job to protect them.

"Listen, Parker," he said, gruff and all hitter now, not friend. "We're splitting up and you're going to -"

"Uh, guys?" interrupted Hardison.

Eliot cut off and looked at their hacker, who was pointing at the surveillance monitors for the brew pub.

"I agree that we should continue this conversation and all that," Hardison said. "But we've got company."


	2. Chapter 2

_Thank you SO much to everyone who read Chapter 1 and especially to you incredibly nice people who reviewed and favorited - it means a ton! You guys are super awesome, and I feel so welcomed to the Leverage fic community (special shout-out to valawenel for being my encouraging sensei on this journey). So, the plan is to update every Friday, hopefully with some bonuses in-between when the fancy strikes. Thanks for reading!_

* * *

**Chapter 2**

_Hardison_

Initially, Hardison had thought the woman on the screen was just going to be the first of many Portland PD officers or FBI agents, and so he instinctively grabbed his briefcase and stowed his laptop in a backpack in anticipation of the raid to come.

"Looks like she came in the front of the pub." He split the feed on the screen, keeping one half of it trained on their unauthorized visitor and scrolling the outside security camera feeds on the other. "Fire escape's clear, but, Parker, you got harnesses just in case?"

"Does an otter mercilessly bang its food on rocks?"

"…I'll take that as a yes."

"I'll cover the door and come last," said Eliot. "Hardison, let's move."

"Right." He grabbed his bags and stood up, but then stopped, watching the screen. Something weird was going on. "Wait, wait. No one else is coming in. And look at her - she isn't snooping around. No gun drawn..."

Eliot took a step closer, peering at the monitor. "You're right. She isn't Portland Police…doesn't move like FBI…"

Hardison almost asked, _"Are you sure?" _but then thought better of it. FBI agents probably had very distinctive walking patterns or something.

"Maybe she's here for a sandwich," said Parker.

Eliot shook his head. "Sign says closed. No normal person would ignore that, especially with all the gourmet options down the street."

"Was the front door locked?" Parker asked.

"I thought Eliot locked it," said Hardison, thumbing over his shoulder.

"Dammit, Hardison!" growled Eliot. "Why don't you take some damn responsibility around -"

"Hey!" said Parker, pointing. "She's sitting down. It…it looks like she's waiting for somebody."

That was exactly how it looked. In fact…

"Wait a second," Eliot said. "That's the client table." He shot Hardison a dark look. "You scheduled an appointment with a _client_ today?"

Hardison hoped his expression conveyed incredulity. "What? I assumed we'd be done with that last con by now! Besides, she sounded pretty desperate in her email."

"Yeah, well, you know what they say about assuming, Hardison."

"It makes an ass out of Eliot?"

A deep, scary, jaguar-gonna-eat-your-babies noise came from Eliot's throat, but Parker, who seemed to live for diffusing tense moments between the two guys, cheerfully said, "I'll go meet with her."

"No!" said Eliot and Hardison together.

"We still need to get out of here," said Hardison at the same time Eliot said, "We're not taking any more clients!"

"Hey," said Parker with a pointed look. "She needs our help. Can't we at least hear her out?"

"Absolutely not," Eliot said. "We need to skip Portland, and every second we stay here, our window to do that closes."

Parker turned to Hardison, her eyes soft and open. When they'd first met, she hadn't even been capable of an expression like that. He loved to see how far she'd come, to see in her face that she cared about him, about the team…about anyone in need.

He smiled at her. He couldn't help it.

Eliot apparently noticed this expression exchange. "Hardison," he warned. "Don't you dare…"

"All right," Hardison agreed, reaching for Parker's hand. It was small and warm in his own. "Let's hear the lady out."

"Absolutely ridiculous," muttered Eliot.

Parker, however, was beaming. "Thank you."

"Oh, you can thank me later," said Hardison with a wink.

She laughed and hit his shoulder lightly with the back of her hand. "I just did, silly!"

Right. Still a long way to go with Parker and subtext.

When they got downstairs, the woman was still sitting at the table, her back to them. She turned, though, as their footsteps echoed through the empty pub.

She stood up. She was tall, maybe close to five-ten or five-eleven, and slim. Despite the dimness - all the lights were off, but late afternoon sun was peeking in through the slats of the window blinds - Hardison could still see that she was pretty, with even olive skin and dark hair that was pulled back in a ponytail. But, she wasn't wearing any makeup, and she had on a boxy, untailored pantsuit that wasn't particularly flattering. Her hands fidgeted in obvious anxiety.

"Oh, I'm so glad you're here," she said. "I thought maybe I had mixed up my appointment time."

"Nope," said Parker before Eliot or Hardison could manage a response. "You're right on time!" She slid into a chair across from the woman, and folded her hands expectantly on the table, visibly over-eager.

The woman sat back down, too. Hardison slid in beside Parker, but Eliot remained standing, arms crossed and eyes darting between the front door and the kitchen.

"So, Miss…?" Hardison prompted.

"Oh, right! I'm sorry," said the woman. She reached up to fiddle with a thin silver necklace at her collarbone. "It's Charlotte. Charlotte Dahl."

"And what's your situation, Miss Dahl?" asked Hardison.

"I…well…"

"You don't have to be shy," said Parker matter-of-factly. "I haven't stabbed anybody lately."

Understandably, Charlotte Dahl looked slightly alarmed at this revelation. "Um…"

"Uh, could you just…give us one second, 'kay?" Hardison held up a finger and then hid his mouth behind his hand. "Hey, babe," he whispered. "Why don't you, you know, let me talk to her?"

"But I want to help her!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know that, so why don't you let me, you know, let me do the talking, and we can…talk to her…know what I'm sayin'?"

Parker scrunched up her lips. "But all you did was repeat what you just said -"

"Miss Dahl," said Hardison, over Parker. "Why don't you just start at the beginning."

She took a deep breath. "I work for a small non-profit that does aid and relief work around the world. Last month, I got reassigned from a project in Uzbekistan to Paris."

"That's a big change of scenery," said Eliot.

"I know, tell me about it," said Charlotte. "I was moved to work with refugees from the Libyan civil war. My company needed someone with good Arabic to go into the camps set up by the government to facilitate communication between our aid workers and the refugees, particularly with women and children, who sometimes won't speak readily to outsiders."

"So you speak Maghrebi Arabic and French," said Eliot. "And Uzbek? That's an unusual skill set."

"I've learned a lot of languages for work," said Charlotte. "And after the second one, they get a lot easier. But I really don't know that much Uzbek - I wasn't there very long. Arabic, on the other hand, I've studied since I was an undergraduate. I know a few dialects."

"So you went to Paris?" asked Hardison, giving a look to Eliot that said, _"Stop interrupting."_

"Yes. And at first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary - I mean, for a refugee camp. But then I started seeing these men around the camp who I knew weren't refugees, and I would see them come and go in groups, about every other day. I began to ask around about who they were, but everyone pretended that they didn't know what I was talking about. They were obviously scared of something. So…one day, when the men showed up…I followed them."

"That was a big risk," said Parker.

"I know I'm just one person, but those refugees have been through enough. If these men were preying on them somehow…I wanted to try to stop it if I could. I wasn't going to take things into my own hands, or anything, but I also didn't want to go to the authorities without some kind of evidence."

"So, what happened?" asked Hardison.

Charlotte began playing with her necklace again. "I followed the men to a gathering on the outskirts of the camp and hid when they went inside. I overheard them…" She closed her eyes and rubbed them, then took in another deep breath. "The men inside were discussing…payment. They wanted their money for something. At first, I thought they were talking to each other, but then…then someone started speaking in perfect American English, with someone translating for him. He thanked the men for their services, but wanted assurance that…that the _attacks_ would go as planned."

Hardison saw Eliot visibly tense. "Did you get eyes on the guy?" asked the hitter.

"Yes," said Charlotte. "I caught a glimpse of him as he left the tent. I'd seen him around before. His name is Carson McMaster." She paused, then carried on, an edge to her voice. "He's an attaché from the American embassy."

They were all silent for a moment as this sunk in.

Hardison cleared his throat. "Did you tell anyone about this?"

"I didn't know who to tell, and I didn't have any real proof. I mean, what if I had misunderstood? Eventually I did go to my supervisor, but he said I was just being paranoid. Even I started to think so."

"Well there hasn't been any recent terrorist activity in Paris," said Eliot. "Maybe you didn't hear what you thought you did."

"I thought so, too. I honestly did."

Parker frowned. "But something changed your mind."

Charlotte Dahl leaned forward, as if she was afraid of being overheard by invisible ears in the brew pub. "A few days later, I was late leaving work. I had gotten tied up helping a few of the women in the camp, so I didn't get home until an hour later than I usually do. When I got back to my apartment building, smoke was pouring out the windows. There had been an ignited gas leak - on my floor, no survivors. If I had been home at my normal time, I would have died." Her eyes were big, anxious. "Please. I was told you help people. I'm sure now that there are going to be terror attacks in Paris soon. And I think someone's trying to kill me because I know who's behind them."

"So…what you want us to do," said Parker, "is fly to Paris, stop the attacks, and prove that a dirty embassy official is behind them?"

"I…" Charlotte looked terrified. "Well…yes."

Parker suddenly began laughing in what was probably an inappropriate way, considering the circumstances, and gave Charlotte two thumbs up.

"Of course we will!"

* * *

_Eliot_

Eliot tried to keep his voice even. Charlotte Dahl didn't need any more shaking up. "Parker…can we talk to you privately?"

Parker made a face but stood up, and Hardison followed suit, asking Dahl to give them a minute. Eliot led the way into the kitchen and stood leaning against one of the long metal counters with his arms crossed.

He eyed Hardison, silently asking, _"Do you want to lead off, or should I?"_

Hardison, evidently opting for the good-cop opening, said, "Parker, we can't take this."

She shook her head. "We have to."

"Babe, it's like we were saying upstairs -"

"We can't just let her get killed!"

Hardison put his hands up, as if to ward off an attack. "That's not what we're going to do. Look, I can insert a tip into the servers for Interpol, the CIA, MI5, you name it. They can handle the attacks. And I can put Charlotte in my own special brand of Witness Protection. Better than the US government. New name, new social, new life, new Facebook page. She'll be okay."

"But what if she's got a life of her own, huh? What if she doesn't want to leave?"

"Collateral damage," said Eliot. "But it's better than being dead."

Parker crossed her arms and mirrored Eliot's stance. Her refusal to walk away from jobs was one of the qualities she did share with Nate, though that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Sometimes her stubbornness could make mules look cooperative. "No one's going to believe that an embassy official is behind it without proof. Maybe they'll stop these attacks, but is McMaster just going to get away?" She looked from Eliot to Hardison, then back at Eliot. "That's not how we do things."

"Parker, were you not _listening_ earlier?" Eliot felt the irritation and frustration of these past weeks bubbling to the surface. His jaw ached from the tension he had been carrying in it. "We don't do anything anymore. We're done. It's over. We failed."

"No. We can do this. We stopped the attack in DC and we can stop another -"

"Parker, _grow up!_" Eliot heard himself say. It was out before he could check it, gruff and scathing. The muscles in Parker's face tensed, her eyes becoming glassy.

Hardison blinked in obvious disbelief for a second, then recovered and shot Eliot a withering glare. He stepped between the thief and the hitter, put his hands on Parker's shoulders, and murmured something that Eliot couldn't hear. Whatever it was, she nodded slowly in response to it and wiped her eyes with the back of a hand.

He hadn't meant to lash out at her, to cut her on a personal level. Guilt and shame threatened to rise up from his gut and spread like the heat from a scalding beverage through his chest, but he had extensive experience ignoring and displacing those particular emotions. Instead of letting them touch him, he made short work of them with logic and a robust sense of self-preservation.

Parker was too close to this job, to every job now. She, more than Eliot or even Hardison, had built her identity around what they did. How many times had Nate and Sophie and Hardison told her that she wasn't alone, that she wasn't just a thief anymore? How many times had they said that to Eliot? The difference was, Parker had finally bought into it and opened herself up, tied herself to the cause. She had changed. No longer was she a solo cat-burglar without direction, searching for belonging by amassing piles of shiny objects. Now she had come to see herself the way clients did: as a hero, as a white knight…as a good guy. Eliot was beginning to realize how tantalizingly close he had come to making that same mistake.

But he had never fully forgotten the truth - that there was no atoning for the things that he had done. There was no crusade righteous enough to take back the darkness he had walked in, no water holy enough for his stains. There was no sterilization of his skill set. No matter who he did it for, his job was still to inflict pain.

Of course he had come to care about these people, but he honestly should have known better. One day it was going to have to end. He should have walked away when Nate and Sophie had. Walked away, retired, retreated, gone to live in a cabin without electricity or running water, next to a pond stocked with trout.

Too late. He had been able to protect the team from everything...except the end.

Hardison was embracing Parker now, protectively stroking her hair as she buried her face in his neck. "Parker…come on," he whispered. "Let's get out of here."


	3. Chapter 3

_Thanks again to everyone who read Chapters 1 and 2! Your follows/favorites and reviews are so encouraging. I apologize in advance because this chapter is slightly shorter than the last two, but the next two updates are going to be much bigger, and this is the break that made sense before them. Anyway, hope you like it!_

_UPDATE: (2/7, 12:08 pm) Now this chapter is actually longer than Chapter 2. Whoops. There was an Eliot internal monologue that just had to get out and hadn't made it into the initial posting. So...sorry, I'm no longer sorry? :)_

* * *

**Chapter 3**

_Eliot_

Parker insisted upon being the one to break the news to Charlotte Dahl. Dahl, for all her desperation, appeared to take it fairly well. Maybe Hardison's solution of tipping off intelligence agencies and getting her a new life seemed like enough to her. Whatever the reason for her calmness, she thanked them profusely for what they had explained they could do, and she left without requiring further convincing.

Fifteen minutes later, they had loaded the last of their bags - stuff of Hardison's, Parker's sacks of candy and cash…and that damn portrait of old Nate - into Lucille. Everything Eliot owned that was worth moving was kept in a storage unit these days, what with the LA office blowing up and leaving Boston for good without warning. Even his apartment had to be ready to burn at a moment's notice. Anyway, he didn't travel with luggage.

It was a testament to the depth and complexity of the aliases constructed by Hardison for the failed con that neither the Portland PD nor the FBI had yet shown up at the brew pub. But their luck couldn't hold for long. Eliot was relieved to finally be clearing the premises, no matter his attachment to the menu he had so lovingly constructed for it.

He slid behind the wheel of the van, and Parker and Hardison climbed in the back. Parker hadn't said a thing to him since the scene in the kitchen, and what Hardison did say was all business. Eliot knew that he had broken an unspoken code with his outburst. But how he could un-break it would have to be something for worrying about later. At least it had gotten them out in time.

His lips pressed into a grim line as he put his foot to the gas pedal and began to pull out. At that moment, though, something streaked in front of the van, and he had to jam the brakes instead to keep from running it over.

It was Charlotte Dahl.

"Wait!" she cried, and put both her hands on Lucille's hood. "Please don't leave me here alone!"

"How the hell did she know we were back here?" barked Eliot. He motioned at the woman to get out of the way, but she vigorously shook her head no.

Hardison coughed. "Parker…"

"You said you could get her a new identity," said Parker, her voice light, as if the past two hours hadn't happened. "Well we have to keep her safe until then. That's the least Eliot can do," she added.

Eliot gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. "I don't want to do this again, Parker."

She didn't respond. Instead, the door audibly opened, and then Parker came walking around the side of the van. She smiled widely at Dahl and took her hand. Seconds later they both were climbing in, and the door slammed shut behind them.

"Well don't just sit here being mad about it, Eliot," said Hardison, who for his part sounded vaguely amused. "Get us out of here."

Hell. That was just what they needed: a tagalong. No, not a taglong, a freakin' _guest_. One glance at the mirror told Eliot all he needed to know about Parker's reasoning - that she didn't have any. This was a kneejerk move that told them she wasn't rolling over and going with the plan, no matter what she'd seemingly agreed to back in the kitchen. It wasn't thought-out, it wasn't in anyone's interest but her own, and it wasn't safe.

Another body to keep track of. Worse, a civilian to keep track of. Civilians were idiots, always thinking too much or not enough, screaming at inopportune times, running in front of moving vehicles…

But what could he do about it now that wouldn't slow them down and blow the rift he'd already opened into a full-on canyon?

_Dammit, Parker_.

Where were all the bad guys when Eliot needed someone to beat up? Grinding his teeth, he threw Lucille into gear again and pulled away from the building, away from their final headquarters, away from their lives for the past five years. Now with extra baggage.

"Where are we going?" asked Dahl as they merged onto Interstate 5 going North.

_And so the questions begin._

"Washington," said Hardison. "We've got some contacts in Seattle. I'll take care of papers for us all there, and I guess we'll get you set up with a plane ticket to your new life."

Dahl sighed. "A new life…sounds…"

"Sorry," said Hardison. "There's just no other viable option."

"What? Oh, no, I think you've got the wrong idea," said Dahl. "A new life actually sounds…sort of great. I'm a little worn out by the expectations of my job. It's been hard, getting moved around all the time, never knowing where they'd want me next. I wanted to make a difference, but I joined my company right out of college, and it's been…well, honestly it's been pretty lonely."

"Why don't you just quit?" Parker asked. She bit down on something that sounded like a handful of dry cereal and started noisily chewing. "Fant sfom?" She shook the box, probably in Dahl's face.

"Um…no thanks."

"Hey, throw me my gummy frogs," said Hardison.

"Ooh, actually, I'll have one of those," said Dahl.

Eliot rolled his eyes. Good to know they were all set on snacks.

"But, seriously," said Hardison after a second, talking around a gummy frog. "Why _didn't_ you just quit?"

Dahl's prolonged silence might have been her thinking. Alternatively, she was trying to chew an entire gummy frog all at once, and that could take awhile. In any case, she finally said, "I…was afraid of what people would think, I guess. Who would trade what I do for a desk job?" Despite her words, she didn't sound completely convinced of them herself.

"A new identity's a high price to pay just to escape peer pressure," said Eliot.

Another long pause, after which Dahl quietly said, "Yes, I guess it is." And the topic was clearly closed, despite the fact that there must have been a whole lot more to the story.

The next forty-five minutes or so passed in silence. Every once in a while Eliot thought about turning on the radio, but he didn't want to deal with Hardison's complaints or Parker silently climbing into the front seat to change the station. They'd been trapped together in a Lucille incarnation enough times for the routine to be clear. Anyway, he wasn't really in the mood to listen to anything. The thoughts in his head were loud enough.

It was Charlotte Dahl who broke the spell again. "So…I don't mean to pry…but someone told me that there were five people on your…team. What happened to the other two?"

None of them answered right away. Then, all at once, Eliot said, "No idea what you're talking about," at the same time that Hardison said, "They sort of retired," and Parker said, "Parachuting accident."

Dahl cleared her throat. "Right. Sorry I asked. None of my business."

_Damn straight._

* * *

_Parker_

Once they reached the outskirts of Seattle, they checked into a middle-of-the-road-nothing-special chain hotel for the night. Hardison made a fuss about having to spoof credit cards to tie to the rooms, but Parker convinced the young man working at the front desk to waive that requirement with a handful of cash from her US Dollar bag. Just in case, she also had Euro and Yen bags in Lucille.

Ten minutes later, they were settling into adjoining rooms, one for Hardison and Eliot and the other for Parker and Charlotte Dahl. Theoretically they could open the doors between the rooms, but Parker wasn't feeling particularly social. Today had been…weird. Worse than weird. Eliot wasn't meeting her eye, Hardison was acting like someone had kicked his puppy, and, even though Parker had been the one to insist that Charlotte come with them, having a stranger around wasn't helping the group dynamic. And Parker hadn't thought far enough ahead to realize she'd have to share a room. That was _really_ weird.

"Uh…excuse me?"

Parker blinked. "Hm? What?" She glanced around. Charlotte Dahl was smiling apologetically from the door to the bathroom.

"I'm…I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you. I just asked if I could have the first shower."

"Oh." Parker shrugged. "Sure." Yeah. Weird.

"Thanks," said Charlotte Dahl. She shifted uncomfortably. "Um…sorry, again, but…what was your name?"

Parker frowned. "What?"

"Your name? I'm sorry. I know it's kind of funny, but I just realized you never introduced yourself. Of course, it's okay if you don't want to -"

"Parker."

Charlotte Dahl smiled and nodded. "Parker…?"

"Hm?"

"Oh, no, it's okay…I was just…we can do just first names. That's fine. Sorry. I didn't mean to -"

Huh? What was this girl talking about? Parker frowned, trying to figure out if maybe Charlotte Dahl was telling some kind of bad joke. There were a lot of jokes that Hardison told that Parker didn't really get. Then again, no one seemed to understand the things that _she_ thought were laugh-worthy.

For instance, Charlotte Dahl was turning red. That was pretty funny. "Never mind. I'll just…take that shower now."

Poor Charlotte Dahl. She definitely needed their help. Anyone as awkward as her wasn't going to get very far with hit-men on her tail. Parker shrugged as the door closed and flopped down on her bed, the one closest to the door, and started picking out patterns in the dapples on the ceiling.

The room phone rang as she was tracing the outline of a hippo with her finger in front of her eye. She stretched over backwards to pick it up, holding it to her ear as she hung halfway off the mattress, upside down.

"Elsa's Dry Cleaning, how may I direct your call?"

"Parker."

"Sorry, no one by that name here. I think you might have the wrong number."

"Parker."

"Do you want to take advantage of our two for ten dollars special? It's a real _steal_."

She imagined Hardison slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand. "Babe, seriously, just wanted to know what kind of pizza you girls want for dinner."

Parker's nose wrinkled. "Again?"

"Now don't you start, too. Our options are limited for delivery around here. I already got the Death Eater crazy-eyes lecture from Eliot. 'If it ain't got Tuscan crust, I won't eat it,' my ass."

"Well, duh, people who eat death don't want to eat pizza, Alec."

There was a pause. "Girl, for real? We just watched the sixth Harry Potter last week." Hardison sighed into his receiver. "You're killing me, smalls."

"Oh, _The Sandlot_. Good movie. What does that have to do with Harley Piper?" Haha, poor Hardison. It was so fun to mess with him sometimes. Way more fun than anything else that had happened today, for sure.

"…tell you what. How about you open y'all's, door, 'kay, and we can all figure out our order together."

Parker frowned. Suddenly she didn't feel so playful. "I don't really want to."

"Parker…"

"Just order whatever Eliot wants. Don't want him to get mad again."

"Parker, that wasn't about you, okay? We're all at the end of our ropes after today. But we're going to figure it out. I promise."

She felt the blood in her cheeks warm up, heavy in her head as she hung off the bed. A pressure settled in her chest, like someone was pushing down on her sternum. It was a foreign sensation, but she was able to pinpoint it because it was the same as what she'd felt back in their Portland headquarters - their last headquarters - just this afternoon. When Eliot and Hardison had suggested - no, insisted - that they split up.

"You didn't even book us two tickets together," she whispered into the phone. Then she hung it up and hugged herself. All of the sudden the room seemed chilly.

Why were the guys being like this? Sure, today had been a setback, but they were acting like it was the end of the world. Come on, they were Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison, and Parker…three people who were really good at what they did. More than that, they were the Leverage team, who stood up for the little guy. If they didn't do it, who would?

Even as she thought it, she remembered what she'd said in the van as they'd pulled away from their failed job: _"I miss Nate and Sophie."_

It was true. Nate would have come up with a plan to keep the job going. Sophie would have played Hardison's employer so Eliot could focus on beating up bad guys…things had worked better with Nate and Sophie.

But it wasn't just the cons that were crumbling. Even Parker, emotionally-unaware as she could be, saw how the three of them who were left were drifting apart. With Nate and Sophie, they had been a family. Without them…it was always two against one. Like this afternoon.

"_Parker, grow up!"_

She knew Eliot hadn't wanted to hurt her feelings - even the constant banter and irritation between the three of them wasn't ever supposed to be _serious_. But she also knew that he had meant what he said. In that moment, he had definitely meant it.

"Hey…Parker?"

She craned her neck forward so that her chin touched her chest. Charlotte Dahl, wrapped in a towel with her long, dark hair dripping, gave another awkward, apologetic smile. Her clothes were tucked under one arm. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"What?" Parker sat up in a hurry and crossed her legs like a pretzel. "Oh yeah. Totally okay. Nooooo problems. None at all. Mucho bueno."

Charlotte Dahl didn't look very convinced. "Look," she said. "I really appreciate what you were trying to do, when you told me I could come along with you guys. But, I was thinking about it in the shower, and I'm going to catch a bus tomorrow. I'll go stay with my brother in Idaho, or something. Because…uh, what's his name? The guy who was driving the van? I think someone said it but I -"

"Eliot."

"Right. Eliot. Um…well, I don't think he wants me around very much. And I think that makes sense, since you all are obviously a team, and I'm just your client, and…"

Something stirred in Parker's stomach. _You all are obviously a team_.

"No," said Parker, interrupting Charlotte Dahl.

"No…what?"

Parker clenched her fists. Eliot and Hardison might think that they were done. Eliot and Hardison might think they needed to split up. Eliot and Hardison might not like having Charlotte Dahl around. But, even if she had to share a room with their client - as totally weird as that was - she was going to show them that they were wrong. That they could do this, and any, job.

Parker felt a small smile creep over her lips. Her mind whirled, already moving a thousand miles a minute. Yes. That could work. It would need to be timed right, but she could do it. Oh, they would be mad. Furious. Eliot would probably snap her in two. But they'd thank her, eventually, when they realized she'd kept them together. That was what mattered.

"No," she said. "I think you should definitely stick with me." She met Charlotte Dahl's gaze and held it ferociously. "Because I'm going to need your help to save Paris."


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter 4! Whoo! This is so exciting! (At least, I sure think so.) Continual copious thanks to everyone who read the preceding chapters and reviewed/favorited/followed. It's really my pleasure to write something that people like to read. Oh, and HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! As my Leverage valentine from me to you, h__ope you enjoy this extra long installment and the new cover image! Tried my hand at banner-making._

___**Notes:** A guest left a review that asked how you could get updates; I believe that having an account and "following" the story does that. Sorry I couldn't send you a PM to let you know! Also, sorry if anyone got notification that Chapter 4 was posted yesterday; I had a minor hiccup in getting everything together, and I think it accidentally "posted" prematurely. So, I am sorry about that, if there was a false alarm..._

___Anyway, onward to what you came for!_

**Chapter 4**

_Hardison_

"And that's… forty for you… keep the change." Hardison flashed a winning smile for the pizza guy and took the boxes containing dinner for the team, plus one. "Cheers, man."

"Don't be too friendly," grumbled Eliot from his bed, where he was watching - well, pretending to watch, probably - a football game. "All it takes is someone's twenty-buck tip for that guy to remember what room the nice black guy was in."

"You're just in a bad mood. Have been all day. Getting me in a bad mood."

Eliot's glare was at once scathing and cold as Boston winter. "You know I'm right. About all of it."

Hardison sighed. He set the boxes down on the dresser beside the TV and collapsed into the chair tucked in the corner near the window. A headache that had begun the moment the job had gone wrong was now a throbbing migraine. He'd tried to chalk it up to low blood sugar, but all the gummy frogs and orange soda in Lucille - or even the newly-arrived pizza - couldn't cure what he knew had way more to do with the dread in the pit of his stomach than anything else.

"Look," he said. "I know what you're saying, man, and I don't disagree. I just… it doesn't feel right. Stopping. Maybe Parker has a point."

Eliot wasn't even pretending to watch the game now. He just stared at Hardison, eyes narrowed. "We've got a list of reasons a mile long why we can't go back to Portland, much less prancing around Europe for a new client. Stanley Singer and his security team saw our faces during that job, and there's probably an APB out on us up and down the coast. We need to lay low. You were right to suggest we get out of the country separately. At least until things cool off."

"Yeah, but that's what worries me," said Hardison. "Because when I hear you say 'until things cool off,' what I'm pretty sure you mean is, 'for good.' Because I see it in your eyes, man. You think we're done. _Done, _done."

Eliot turned his dark look to the bedspread. A curtain of hair fell over his eyes as he murmured, "We were done months ago. The moment Nate and Sophie left."

The words stung, and Hardison couldn't stop himself from physically flinching away from them. "Now hold on just a damn minute - "

"You know it's true. You know the last few months have handed our ass to us. We're not a crew, Hardison. Three people ain't a crew."

"Fine. I'll give you that. The three of us haven't been enough. Not for the kind of stuff we want to do. But we can still - "

"Still _what_? Steal stuff? Hack stuff? Hit stuff? Yeah. We can. On our own. Or the two of you can scamper off together, whatever. But _this - _" He made a tight little circle with his index finger in the air. " - this is over. I said it earlier, and I stand by it. We cut it close today. Next time, we might not all get out in one piece. So I'm calling it. We're done. We had a good run, but I'm not going to let you two get yourselves killed, thinking you can do everything we used to be able to. When you get your arms amputated you don't insist you can still play baseball."

"Really? That's the metaphor you're going with?"

Eliot wasn't amused. "This is it, Hardison." The hitter's face softened, just slightly, though he still looked like he might break something in half at any second. "I'm sorry. Tomorrow morning, I'm out."

There were a million things Hardison wanted to say, but none of them could factually counter what Eliot was laying down. Then again, hadn't it always been that way between them, to a certain extent?

"You know what this reminds me of, Eliot?"

"…what?"

"Spock, McCoy, and Kirk. Head, Heart, Gut."

"Are you seriously bringing up Star Wars right now?"

"_Trek_. Star _Trek_, Eliot. For the bazillionth - no, you know what? Hear me out. Spock's the head. That's you. Facts. This is the situation, this is how it is. McCoy's the heart. That's Parker. She doesn't care about the facts if it goes against what she feels is right. And Kirk… he's the gut. He goes on instinct."

Eliot raised his eyebrows in obvious skepticism. "And that's you?"

Hardison couldn't help being mildly offended at that. He crossed his arms. "Yeah, that's me. And my instinct is that we can't just be done. Maybe we take a break, like after the First David Job or post-San Lorenzo. But not for good. Not knowing what it will do to Parker."

_What it will do to me,_ he thought. _Even what it would do to you, Eliot, no matter how tough you think you are._

Eliot sighed, but his face became an unreadable mask. Big surprise. "Well, something's gotta give, then." He shook his head and stood up, pointing at the pizza boxes. "But right now, I'm freakin' hungry. I'll even eat that."

Well, that was progress. A whole lot of pessimistic progress, but movement on the issue, nonetheless. Hardison took that as his cue to get the girls.

* * *

Soon they were all spread out around the boys' hotel room, greasy pizza slices nearly sliding off of cheap paper plates in their laps. Parker perched next to Hardison on the bed, though she hadn't directly spoken to him since she'd hung up on their phone call earlier. Eliot sat on the floor, back against the wall, and Charlotte was looking very awkward in the chair in the corner.

Hardison glanced sideways at his girlfriend, but she didn't look back at him. She was instead doing a very good job of appearing preoccupied with picking an olive off the top of her half-eaten slice.

_"You didn't even book us two tickets together," _echoed her voice in his head, making up for her in-person silence.

He wanted to shut his head in the door, or at least slap himself. No wonder she didn't want to talk to him. Even Eliot had pointed out that Hardison and Parker would 'scamper off together,' but Hardison had automatically booked three separate tickets for their getaway. Only now was he putting together how that must have looked to the girl who only trusted four people in the world… two of whom had left her and two more who were suggesting that they up and do the same.

"Parker… can I talk to you for a second?"

Her lips twisted to one side, but she didn't look at him, still apparently fascinated by the olive, which she then abruptly popped in her mouth.

"Whatcha want to talk about, huh?" she asked her plate.

"It's… you know, I didn't - look, Parker, can we - " He glanced up at the other two. Charlotte was obviously trying very hard to seem interested in something else. Eliot had his eyes closed, but that didn't mean jack. "Can we go to your room for a sec?"

Parker plopped her plate down on the bedspread and stood up, moving stiffly to the door adjoining the hotel rooms and slipping through it without a word.

Sighing and stepping over Eliot's outstretched legs, Hardison followed, closing the door softly behind them. Parker's overnight bag was tipped over on her bed, and next to it wads of non-sequential, unmarked bills were mixed in a little pile with a couple of rigs and some changes of clothes. She pushed half of the pile to one side and sat down in the space she'd made, surrounded by a wall made from her odd assortment of belongings. A makeshift refuge.

Hardison glanced at the other bed, which was only graced by Charlotte Dahl's plain black handbag. If she'd brought anything else with her to Portland, it had been left behind. He sat down on the edge of the mattress.

Neither one of them said anything. Parker was looking down at her hands, not once making eye contact with him. After a while she started arranging her stacks of bills into little towers. Hardison tried to find the words to begin, but he wasn't even sure what he wanted to say. Here they were, finally alone for the first time since Eliot's outburst at the brew pub, but Hardison felt his throat constricting whenever he thought of a sentence that remotely came close to what he felt like she needed to hear.

Something clicked in his mind, and he blinked. Maybe that was the problem: he had been so focused all day long on fixing the problem, on keeping Parker and Eliot on an even keel, that he hadn't once thought about what he needed to say for _himself_, or why that might matter. _He _hadn't wanted them all to fly to different places… but he'd done what he'd thought he was supposed to.

He found his voice. "Parker?"

She still didn't look up. One of her money towers was leaning precariously to one side. She nudged it with a finger to keep it from toppling over.

"Hey, mama? C'mon, look at me."

Her eyes darted up and met his, though her face was clenched in a frown.

"Next time, it's you and me to the Caribbean. First class. You and me. Together."

Her features relaxed, but she didn't blink, as if she had suddenly decided they were going to have a staring contest. "What about Eliot?"

He blew out a deep breath and shook his head, forfeiting his chance to out-stare her - not that there was a snowball's chance in Hell of that, to begin with. "Honestly? I don't know. I was talking to him earlier, and he's… well, he's set on what he thinks will keep us safe. You know him. All he cares about is keeping us alive."

"Yeah, well, maybe he should care a little bit more about keeping us friends," she muttered and knocked the money tower over with a flick of her pinky.

"I know, babe... I know."

"I just…" began Parker after a pause, "…it's not fair. It's one job. One mistake."

He stood up and brushed aside a mound of clothes tangled up in one of her jump-off-a-tall-building harnesses, sitting down beside her and slipping an arm around her waist. After a second, she leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder. He kissed her hair.

"We'll figure something out," he said. _Please, let that be true._

He almost missed Parker's whisper against his shirt. "I don't want Eliot to change back. I'm scared he'll change back."

Hardison's heart clenched as she voiced one of his own lurking fears. In the long run, they would probably be okay. But Eliot? Eliot didn't have a Sophie or a Parker to anchor him. If Eliot stepped out without them, he stepped out alone. And the person he'd been when he was alone… honestly, Hardison was a little frightened by that guy. "We won't let that happen."

"I know," said Parker.

He was so focused on reassuring her that it wasn't until later that he considered the odd change in her tone of voice then, that tightening of her words as she added, "We'll do what we have to."

* * *

_Eliot_

Parker and Hardison's footfalls moved into the girls' room. Probably to talk about Eliot. At least about how to convince him to not walk away come daybreak. They just didn't get it. Any move he made was for them. To keep them safe. Why couldn't they trust his damn judgment without question every once in a while? Or even just once - that'd be something.

But, no. Whenever their lives might hang in the balance, no one but Parker and Hardison could be so stubborn and obtuse.

"Are they... you know, together?"

Eliot opened one eye. Dahl was looking at him, nibbling on the edge of her crust.

Man, this girl asked a lot of questions. Too many questions for Eliot's taste. Typical civilian, unable to just sit still and be quiet and let the experts do their job.

"Yes." He closed his eye again, hoping that was a clear enough signal for her. He'd already sucked down his pizza - greasy, tasteless, rubbery, but sustenance - so he could sit like this for hours. In fact, a little bit of sleep sounded pretty good right about now.

"Yeah, I figured." Dahl laughed. "Well, that's a bummer. I thought he was kind of cute. What was his name, again?"

So much for taking the hint.

"Hardison."

"Eliot, Parker, and Hardison."

Eliot. Yes, Hardison had said his name in Lucille. Parker. Parker could have introduced herself. Or, more likely, Dahl had asked. And they'd just covered Hardison… maybe he should have been more careful, even if she was technically a client. He opened both his eyes this time, looking for a hint of recognition in her features. Nothing. Just curiosity. A whole lot of it.

He turned on what little bit of Southern Gentleman he could muster at the moment. "Look, Miss Dahl, I don't want to be rude. I'm just pretty tired, and we're sort of private people, so…"

"Oh! Oh, of course. I'm sorry. I'll just… I'm going to get some water."

Finally.

She got up, headed for the bathroom. He resumed napping position and a minute later heard her come back, sipping from one of the room's water glasses. They sat in blissful silence for a while… until the knock on the door.

Eliot was on his feet between heartbeats, but, surprisingly, so was Dahl. She was already tiptoeing toward the door.

Idiot. Damn civilians. Insistent upon putting themselves in harm's way. Was no one in the world remotely rational?

"Don't look through the - " Eliot's whisper died on his tongue.

Dahl had her back to the door and her head turned to press her ear against it. Instead of peering through the peephole, which he'd been about to warn her against - there were plenty of ways for unwanted company to use peepholes to gather information or even determine where to place a bullet - she eyed the deadbolt, which was done, and slowly crouched. Silent as a cat.

The knock came again.

"Excuse me," said a voice on the other side. "I have extra blankets for a Mister Jay?"

Hardison's check-in alias. Some reference to "men in suits" or something. Now that Eliot thought about it, Hardison had called down to the front desk for extra blankets after his unproductive pizza conversation with Parker.

He mouthed _"Okay"_ to Dahl. She visibly relaxed. Then, as if nothing had happened, she stood up, brushed off her pants, and opened the door.

At that moment Hardison came back in, though Parker didn't follow. His expression was difficult to read, as if he didn't quite know how to react to whatever had happened during their conversation. "Oh, good, my blankets."

Dahl smiled at the hotel employee who had dropped off the blankets and closed the door, handing the folded pile to Hardison. "I get cold in hotels, too," she said. "I can't ever get the air conditioning units to turn down right!"

Hardison smiled tiredly at her and nodded, but his mind was obviously somewhere else. "Well, I'm going to turn in. Parker's already getting into her pajamas… guess she doesn't want the rest of that pizza. Anyway, I'll call my contacts tomorrow, get you your new documents… all that."

"Leave the door on your side slightly cracked," said Eliot. "Just in case anything goes down and we need to get you out quickly."

Charlotte Dahl looked a little alarmed by the suggestion, but she nodded. "Of course. Sorry, I'm just not used to… well, you understand."

_Then why didn't you look through the peephole?_

"If you need anything, or if anything happens," said Hardison, "just call or knock. Eliot doesn't really sleep that much, anyway, so he'll probably be awake. "

Dahl offered Eliot a sympathetic look that made him want to roll his eyes. "My dad used to struggle with insomnia," she said. "He eventually went and saw a hypnotist to get help with it."

Hardison made a funny sound in his throat at the mention of the hypnotist, but when Dahl turned to look at him again, the hacker just smiled. Good. The last thing they needed right now was Hardison trying to explain why he wasn't big on hypnosis, which would undoubtedly open a Pandora's Box of questions from Little Miss Curious.

"Good night," prompted Eliot.

"Oh, yes, good night," said Dahl. She nodded, smiled at Hardison - a little too long - and ducked back into the girls' room, shutting the guys' door quietly behind her.

Even though he was tired, grumpy, and annoyed, Eliot couldn't help a small smirk. "Somebody's got a crush."

"What? Nah. She's just traumatized from spending ten minutes alone with you."

They both snorted. A moment of normalcy.

"Hey," said Eliot. "Do me a favor? Run a check on her."

"On Charlotte?"

"Yeah… I've just got this… feeling."

Hardison's eyebrows crept upward. "A feeling? You mean like a gut feeling? You wanna be Kirk now?"

"I didn't say I bought into your little Star Trek classification system."

"Heyyyy." Hardison grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. "You remembered right. Trek, not Wars."

"What? No. Whatever. Just run the damn check."

The hacker grabbed his laptop bag and opened the computer. Soon the tapping of his fingers on the keyboard filled the room. "So, what do you mean, you got a feeling?"

"It's just something she did. When the blankets came."

"The hypnotist thing? I know, that's seriously messed up, man - "

"No. Before she opened the door." He replayed it in his mind, just that ten second window. "She didn't look through the peephole." The more he thought about it, went through it, the more it bugged him. How very non-civilian-like it had been.

"I know lots of people - normal people, Eliot - who don't look through the peephole when they answer the door."

Eliot shook his head, eyes traveling to Charlotte Dahl's abandoned water glass. "She moved quietly, intentionally. She put her back to the door, listened for vibrations against it, and she crouched. Like she was anticipating… like she was anticipating a possible gunshot. She didn't think about it. It was just instinct."

"Well, maybe they get training for that at her organization."

"Relief work?"

"Okay, fine, but someone did try to kill her, Eliot. She probably watched some episodes of Burn Notice and got a few tips."

No... no matter what Hardison thought, something just wasn't quite right. Eliot grabbed a tissue from the bathroom and used it to pick up the water glass. "Here. Take this for prints."

Hardison glared. "Yeah, I'll just break out the dusting kit and the scanner and search through the massive databases to vet a _client_, Eliot. I did a check before I even agreed to meet with her, you know."

"Not with her prints, you didn't. Remember a little guy named Dubenich?" Who could forget that betrayal? And that moment of realization, when it clicked that they had been played. Why did this feel like that? "Clients can be dangerous, too. Just do me this favor, all right?"

"Ugh… fine. Gimme." The hacker made a little crab claw-like motion for the glass, which he perched on the end of the room's singular pen and then got up to drop in the plastic laundry bag hanging in the closet. "I'll be in Lucille. Unless you wanna come with."

That was a tough call. Eliot never liked to have the team split up, anyone out of his reach if anything went wrong. But, that was a reality of working with a team, and so he had to make the most strategic call… if not always a perfect one. "Just pull around down there, where I can see you from the window. Don't want to leave Parker alone."

Hardison's smile was sad and snarky at the same time. "Yeah, well, can't protect her if we go splitting up the team, either, you know."

Really? He was going to push that right now? "Wrong," said Eliot, scowling. "That's exactly what I'd be doing and why I'd be doing it. Just… go on. I'll keep an eye on you."

The hacker sighed, but he took his laptop, the laundry bag with the glass, and a room key and slipped out.

Alone, at last, Eliot sank onto his bed and buried a hand in his hair. Damn this day. He'd had his share of bad ones, but these hours just insisted on dragging on, building up, getting worse, with not a single thing he could do to stop the triage except badger his friends into not taking their idiot pills.

_The most strategic call,_ he repeated to himself. _Not necessarily the perfect one._

Then he snorted. Who was he kidding?

_Never the perfect one._

* * *

_Hardison_

It was somewhat comforting to be working in Lucille, to be doing something normal. Well, normal for Hardison. Normalcy was one of those things that was definitely relative.

He immediately opened one of the individual-sized bottles of Orange Squeeze in Lucille's mini-fridge that he kept stocked for stakeout and hacking emergencies, and by the time he'd dusted Charlotte's water glass for her fingerprints, transferred them, and scanned them, it was long-empty. He was on his third bottle when his computer finally got a hit.

"Charlotte Dahl," he read out loud. "Yep. Thought so. Let's see… graduated top five percent of her class from Virginia Tech, employed by World Coalition for Aid and Relief, aka WOCAR, for eight years. Man, she's been all over… Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Tanzania, Pakistan… Prints match from a background check run through the State Department..." He shrugged. "Looks legit to - "

The computer beeped again.

A second match? It must have been a duplicate in another database. He pulled up the new window that had opened, started reading… and nearly dropped his soda bottle.

"What the… wait a second." He typed in a string of much more complicated commands, ducking past one of his favorite firewalls to bypass in the world, and dove into a hidden directory.

He had to set the bottle down.

"Holy. Freakin'. Crap." He closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing. Oh, this was so bad. So bad. "Calm down, man," he whispered to himself. The breaths weren't coming as steadily as he would have liked. "Calm down. Gotta tell Eliot. Oh man, Eliot. Parker!" The hacker snatched his laptop from its hookups to the van equipment and shoved it into his bag as he simultaneously threw open Lucille's side door to clamber out. He nearly tripped over himself sprinting up the hotel stairs and swiped his room key too fast on the first couple of tries. But, finally it registered, and he burst into his and Eliot's room to find the hitter wide-awake and on his feet.

"What? What did you find? I saw you out the window."

Hardison struggled to string a coherent sentence together - so much was trying to come out at once. "I got - Charlotte Dahl was legit, but - see, got a second hit - oh, man, we have to - Eliot this is - okay, wait, just let me - "

"Hardison!" Eliot hissed. "Calm down! Start from the beginning."

"Man, there might not be time for - okay, here, just look." Hardison opened the laptop and practically shoved it at Eliot, who was already reading the screen before grabbing it.

The hitter's eyes darted back and forth, and as he scrolled further and further down, they got darker and darker. "Where did the second ping on the prints come from?" he growled.

"French domestic intelligence. It's an open investigation. The primary agent on the case - "

"Died in an apartment explosion a week ago. I see that."

"Sound familiar?"

Eliot swore. "Just like Dahl's story. So this guy figured out Charlotte Dahl was - "

"Also registered as a junior attaché - "

"At the embassy, yes, I _see that_, Hardison!"

"And you know what attaché means - "

"Dammit! I should have put it together earlier."

They both should have. 'Attaché' was the easiest cover to see through in the world. But they hadn't been looking for it. It had been staring them in the face and they hadn't so much as spared it a second glance. They'd been off-balance after the failed job and their internal conflict. They'd been sloppy.

"I ran the facial recognition through the Langley servers." Hardison reached over and executed a couple of keystrokes to bring up the file that matched Charlotte Dahl's picture. "And sure enough…"

"Morgan Gray… alias Charlotte Dahl," read Eliot, though he didn't need to; the hardening of his features meant he had connected the dots, too. He looked like he might smash the computer into the wall. "She's freakin' CIA."

They stood in silence for a beat, looking at each other, and then they were in motion. Eliot threw open the adjoining door on their side, but instead of the girls' door being cracked, it was locked tight.

"Parker!" yelled Hardison, banging on the door. "Parker! Open up!"

"Stop," snapped Eliot. "Back up."

"What? You aren't seriously - "

"Move!"

"Eliot, no! These hotel room doors have steel-reinforced frames and - "

"You ever seen somebody break multiple bricks with one hand?"

"Yeah on YouTube - "

"Hardison. Trust me. I make those guys look like little girls."

"…Fine." Running through the calculations in his head, but scared for his life if he stood in Eliot's path right now, Hardison ducked out of the way.

The sound as Eliot roundhouse-kicked the door latch was like the contents of a value-size box of fireworks all going off at once. The effect was almost the same, too; the door practically exploded into the room, contained only by its hinges.

Hardison's stomach lurched wildly even before they entered, because one of the bedside lamps was on - had been _left_ on - and he could clearly see the whole room.

Parker and Charlotte Dahl - no, and _Morgan Gray_, CIA - were gone.


	5. Chapter 5

_Happy Friday, everybody! Chapter 5 already...wow! And it's a bit of a monster. Oh well. Don't get too used to it... haha! As always, huge shout-out to everyone who's read and reviewed; I love to know how you're liking the story. And another big thank-you to valawenel, who helped me to nail down the structure of this chapter and get it just right. Okay, onward!_

* * *

**Chapter 5**

_Eliot_

"I'm going to kill her." Eliot's voice was sandpaper.

"_You're_ going to kill her?" said Hardison. "Get in line."

"Aren't you finished with that yet?"

"After all this time, you still think I wave a magic wand to do this stuff, don't you?"

Eliot released a very controlled breath, counting backward from a hundred. He felt himself about to snap, and he needed to get a handle on that immediately. Worry, anger, guilt - he had to put them off for now. No time.

Dammit, no time.

He began pacing the room again. He couldn't stand still. There were situations when he could remain unmoving for hours, days even. But not when action was demanded of him. Not when he was like a restless racehorse in the starting gate, waiting for the gun.

He glanced at the note, a scribble on the hotel's courtesy pad of paper, that was sitting on his bed. Neither he nor Hardison had touched it since retrieving it from the adjacent room, where it had been sitting beside Parker's abandoned cell phone. It might as well have been a poisonous snake.

_See you in Paris!  
-Parker  
(and Charlotte) _

Sure, Charlotte Dahl was actually a CIA agent named Morgan Gray, but this silent, sneaky departure had Parker written all over it. Had that twenty pounds of crazy ever actually given up hope of taking this job? At this point, all signs pointed to no.

And he should have seen them. He should have known Parker would be freakin' Parker.

Walking right into what had to be a trap.

"All right," Hardison finally said. "They're booked on the American Airlines flight to New York that left at ten forty-five… dang, Parker must have been driving for them to make that… probably hot-wired a car. They're checked in. Booked under Sarah Michaels - that's one of the identities I made for Parker when we moved to Portland - and Charlotte Dahl. Yeah, they're not even trying to cover their tracks."

"She wants us to follow," said Eliot. "But she hasn't given us any extra ammo to stop her. This is definitely Parker, not Gray. At least right now. But, hundred bucks says this is exactly what Gray wants. When's their flight to Paris?"

"Six am. It's seven hours… puts them into Charles De Gaulle airport at seven pm, local time." Hardison rapidly typed something and continued, "We can't get anything that lands before then. I can get us close, though… seven forty-five."

"What if we caught a charter right now, to New York?"

"Might take us a couple hours just to wake somebody up at this hour for a last minute contract."

"Then just find us a plane."

"So you can, what, pilot us straight from Seattle to Paris? Can you even fly a damn plane? Eliot, listen, I can get us in forty-five minutes later."

"Forty-five minutes is an eternity for a kidnapping or a hit, Hardison. Anything could happen in forty-five minutes!"

"And it's the best that we can - "

Eliot erupted. "Dammit, Hardison! Our best isn't good enough!" He had to calm down. He had to get control. But three months' worth of frustration and unadulterated rage suddenly overflowed even what he could just file away. Everything they stood for failing spectacularly. Getting conned by the frickin' CIA. Parker taking matters into her own hands, with a one way ticket to prison, or worse.

With a wordless roar, he grabbed the object closest to him, which was a floor lamp, and slammed it Roy Chapel-style into the headboard above his bed. The headboard, made from lacquered particle board, cracked in a jagged set of lines that radiated from the point of impact like a sunburst.

Then, silence. Hardison wasn't even breathing.

Eliot tossed the lamp on the bed and closed his eyes. Nothing to say. Nothing that could be said. He took an inventory of what was going on inside his head. He felt… not _better_; that wasn't the word. Manageable. The anger had been transferred, the overflow dealt with for now. A nauseating lapse of control that had at least opened a valve and relieved some of the pressure. He'd put off grappling with the larger, darker problem, but he knew the choreographed moves to that fight well enough to do it blindfolded. Anyway, one crisis at a time, and Parker's damn Paris vacation was obviously most urgent.

But manageable. Yes, it was manageable.

Of course, Hardison wouldn't understand that. How could he? He dealt with his emotions like a normal person. Eliot had forgotten how that even worked.

After thirty seconds or so of silence, after eternity, Hardison said softly, "I'll book the tickets." He went back to typing.

Another minute went by, the clicking of keys the only sound in the room-fast, constant, and hypnotic. Until… "Hardison."

"Yeah, Eliot?"

He had to say _something_, or he was going to lose the only ally he had left. Whether or not Hardison had a place to put what had just happened, refusing to acknowledge it would only unnerve the hacker more. "I'll leave some money for the damage." Not _sorry_. He wasn't.

In that moment, Hardison surprised him. "Man, next time you just need to hit something," he said, "I'll drive you downtown to find a street gang. All I ask is for a little warning, 'kay?"

Maybe he understood more than Eliot gave him credit for.

"You're all right, Hardison," he said. He meant it.

Hardison grinned that infuriating, self-important grin. But Eliot saw through it, saw that the hacker was putting it on to cover his fear and his uncertainty. His girlfriend was AWOL with a lying scumbag of a CIA operative. His best friend had just lost it and defaced a hotel room. For three months, Eliot had resented Hardison for his lack of decisiveness, his tactical errors, his failure to rise to the occasion. But maybe Hardison hadn't been the only one to ask, _"What would Nate do?" _

Eliot had demanded that of him every day.

And still the guy stuck around and made stupid jokes and held them all together. He was the reason they'd even made it three months. If it had been up to just Parker and Eliot, they wouldn't have lasted a week.

Eliot looked down at his boots. Boots that gave him away to the trained eye. Boots that kicked in doors and broke people's arms. Boots that ran toward the people who needed him. Not boots that ran away.

There was a difference between a tactical retreat and just giving up. Which was it, if he left Parker and Hardison to their own devices? Which was it, if he let his anger spiral and his resentment fester? Which was it, if he went back to who he was before, like a dog to its vomit?

Damn, this crew really had changed him. Slowly. Silently.

Like carbon monoxide poisoning.

* * *

_Flight 6846 - Somewhere over North Dakota_

"Do you have orange soda?" Parker asked the flight attendant.

"Uh… no, I'm sorry. We do have Coca-Cola products, coffee, hot tea - "

"Doesn't Coke make some kind of orange soda?"

"I'm… not sure, ma'am. But can I offer you something else?"

Parker's brows drew together, and she scrunched her nose. "I guess I'll have some coffee."

Morgan Gray glanced at the cheap, beaten-up digital watch on her wrist. 11:39 pm, Pacific Time. Parker practically hummed with energy even when she was sitting still - sort of like a refrigerator. Adding caffeine on top of that sounded a little frightening. "Hey, Parker? Are you sure you want to - "

"She'll have a coffee, too."

The flight attendant smiled, looking somewhat relieved. "Two coffees, then."

"Uh, actually, just water for me, if you - "

"Don't be silly," said Parker. She wiggled her eyebrows. "We have to stay up all night to plan."

Morgan tried to manage a smile but internally groaned. This was her second plane in 24 hours, with another to go. She'd been on a red-eye from DC to Portland just last night to make her appointment with Parker and Friends, and now… headed back to Paris via New York.

An uncomfortable chill went through her just thinking about going back there. To Carson McMaster, who she'd have trouble not shooting at first sight. To her handler, Dave, who she didn't know whether to trust anymore. To no allies - no Gérard Nejem. Because he was dead.

Gérard Nejem. Thirty-four. Single. Moroccan parents, French citizen. Lactose intolerant. Two plants in his apartment, no pets. Prep cook at a mid-priced Moroccan restaurant on Rue Bretagne. Courier for Libya-based extremists. Or so she'd thought.

It had taken three months for the Agency to identify Nejem. When they finally did, Morgan had gotten the call - a transfer out of her brief assignment in Uzbekistan to run point on the ongoing investigation into the Libyan group's activities in France. Five days ago, Nejem had supposedly been visiting relatives in Avignon, so Morgan had gotten on the same speed train and tailed him into the city. Her assignment: to approach and flip him. To get the Agency an inside man within the Libyan operation.

She definitely hadn't counted on what he'd say when she caught up with him. About him being an agent with French domestic intelligence, undercover with the Libyans for 6 months. About Carson McMaster, the CIA station chief in France since 2008 and her boss, and how he was funneling money to terrorists.

_Ugh_. Closing her eyes briefly, she tried to focus on the present, not on that memory. She needed a _scotch_, not some cup of airplane coffee. But she wasn't about to give Parker, world-famous thief, a reason to ask questions. Honestly, it was a wonder she'd gotten even part of the Leverage Consulting & Associates team to help her. It had certainly been a last-ditch effort on her part, a hail-Mary from half court.

Even though the CIA technically wasn't supposed to gather intelligence about American citizens, Morgan had seen the files on ex-insurance investigator Nathan Ford and his crew of baddies back during her days as a new recruit at the Farm, partially to learn from them and partially to be aware of them, since sometimes they interfered abroad. They'd been at the heart of the democratic revolution in San Lorenzo, for example - that was something intelligence analysts were sure of. The Agency obviously couldn't make arrests, if they were to come across the infamous crew, but, should the situation arise, officers were expected to "take care of it." These days, in the midst of budget cuts and inter-agency squabbling and bad press, the Agency wouldn't say no to a win. And Ford and his friends would be a big win.

Over the course of her career, though, Morgan had never even come close to crossing paths with any of the members of Ford's team. When they were in San Lorenzo, she'd been in Tanzania. When they'd popped up in Tokyo, she'd been running for her life in Cairo. So she hadn't given much thought to the crew that had united notorious former loners Sophie Devereaux, Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison, and Parker. They were an entity completely off of her radar… until Nejem had been killed and she had become the only living soul who knew the truth about Carson McMaster's treason.

Everything she had told Parker and her partners had been true… except for a couple of details. First, obviously her name wasn't Charlotte Dahl. It was her long-time cover identity, though, and Dahl was supposed to be an aid worker, so that had worked surprisingly well. Second, she hadn't been the one to tail McMaster in the Libyan refugee camp; that had been Nejem. He was also the one who had actually been targeted in an apartment bombing - just after he had called her to tell her about a breakthrough that she had to see in person.

That was where Nate Ford et al. entered the picture: the morning after the "gas explosion" that had taken out Nejem, an envelope had been sitting just inside her hotel room door. Its contents was a short note, written on plain paper:

_Leverage Consulting & Associates  
hhgtm AT mail DOT net_

A Google search hadn't turned up much, but a classified database query had been a different story. Leverage Consulting & Associates was the former cover of none other than Nathan Ford's crew, who, if rumors were to be believed, now fancied themselves modern day Robin Hoods or something. Of course, that a band of renowned criminals would be any help to her, whether they were rumored to have gone straight or not, had sounded about as plausible to Morgan as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

And the note itself was problematic. It meant someone else _did_ know something about what she'd been doing. Making contact through that email address could be the biggest trap she'd ever walked into, some test laid out by a suspicious McMaster or his Libyan allies.

But, if there was going to be an attack in Paris, and if she was the only person who could do anything about it and nail the man responsible, she was going to need help.

She had been very careful, constructed a burner email address and forwarded it through three more, each based on a different continent. Morgan was no Alec Hardison, but she had picked up a thing or two about covering her cyber tracks during her time in the field. She had been vague but frightened in her message, and the reply had been as simple as the note under her door:

_May 2nd. 4:00 pm  
Bridgeport Brew Pub  
Portland, OR _

And because maybe she was crazy or really that desperate, she'd gotten on that red-eye, and she'd walked into that microbrewery, and she'd presented Gérard's story - framed by her cover and accompanied by a little prayer. But she honestly hadn't been surprised when neither Eliot Spencer nor Alec Hardison had been leaning toward helping. She'd read it in the lines around their eyes, Spencer's closed-off stance, Hardison's fingers idly twisting with guilt. Parker, though, from the minute Morgan had walked in, had been one-hundred percent on her side-alert, interested, enthusiastic. And she hadn't wavered since.

Parker had come out of her team's little pow-wow in the kitchen and extended her hand, which Morgan had shaken. She had explained what must have been the decision they'd all arrived at together: that the best they could do was agency tips and a new name. But then, as her male companions had turned and disappeared again, the woman who had liberated countless artifacts and priceless pieces of art from vaults around the world had lingered and said, "If you somehow ended up in the alley behind this building in, say, fifteen minutes… maybe we could talk about it again."

Surreal, to say the least.

Whatever her partners had decided, a light in the thief's eyes at that moment and a little bounce in her gait as she, too, walked away, told Morgan that Parker had decided to rebel against it. Which was good in some ways; after all, they were sitting on this plane. But that rebellion could also be very dangerous.

"Right, Parker, about the plan… I'm still feeling a little nervous about leaving without your friends…"

Parker smiled and gave a dismissive wave with one hand. "They'll catch up. I left a note."

Yes, that danger. Even if Spencer and Hardison did decide to follow them, Morgan didn't think it would be to help out. She briefly imagined what it might be like to have your arms torn off, since those were the kinds of things Spencer had a reputation for. Or maybe she'd get lucky and Hardison would just erase her identity, or upload a worm that stole all of her meager government salary.

Then there were the dangers of accepting help from someone like Parker in the first place, who, at the best of times, was classified in intelligence and law-enforcement circles as a little bit wackadoo. Less optimistic profilers pegged her as a loose cannon. This rebellion business was convincing Morgan more and more of the latter, though unpredictable help was probably better than no help at all. At least, that was what she kept telling herself to keep from just throwing up her hands and quitting.

And she did have to hand it to the thief… the girl was sweet, if a little _off_.

"Do you really like orange soda or something?" Morgan asked as the flight attendant passed them their coffees.

Parker shrugged. "It's okay."

Morgan's right eyebrow crept up. "Sounded like you really wanted some to me."

"Oh - yeah. I did." A pause, then, as if it clarified everything, "Hardison drinks it all the time."

Interesting. Parker might be trying on rebel status, but she was already missing what she'd left behind.

"How long have you two been dating?"

"How'd you know that?"

"Your friend Eliot told me." And it was obvious, in a sort of precious way. But the less Morgan referred to her own powers of behavioral observation, the better. Sometimes she had to catch herself and remember that Parker wasn't on her way to help Morgan Gray. She was there for overly-curious, socially-awkward Charlotte Dahl.

"Aw, Eliot." A conspiratorial smile etched Parker's face. "He's all gooey inside."

"Really? He seems pretty… solid to me."

"Eliot's like a Tootsie-Roll pop. When you bite his head off, there's a squishy surprise inside."

That. Was a disturbing image.

"I'll take your word for it." Of course, Spencer hadn't told her about Parker and Hardison of his own volition; he'd just been answering a question. But it was worth noting Parker's appraisal of the infamous hitter. If there was, in fact, something squishy in there, though, it was obviously buried deep, deep,_ deep_ down.

"So," said Parker brightly, changing the subject. "Ready to plan? I promise, your part won't be that hard. You just have to be yourself."

If only that were true, thought Morgan with a wry smile. She couldn't help a quiet, ironic laugh as they settled into the most bizarre trans-continental conversation she'd ever had.

* * *

_Hardison_

Well, the good news about Eliot's Barry Bonds moment was that it seemed to actually calm the hitter down. He'd been practically zen ever since. Though, with Eliot, that didn't mean that everything was all sunshine and rainbows - just that things were under control. There was a dullness to his gaze that meant he was at war inside and definitely not _okay_, but at least they were moving and Eliot hadn't brought up breaking up the team in over eight hours. The lamp thing must have been like taking the lid off a pot of boiling water so the bubbles didn't overflow… and Hardison could understand that. The boiling water was still boiling, though. That was the bad news. And that Hardison's blood pressure was still recovering. Seriously, he needed some normal friends.

To make up as much time as possible between Parker and Morgan Gray's arrival in Paris and their own, Hardison and Eliot had taken the earliest flight they could get to Chicago and landed an Air France direct flight from there into Charles de Gaulle. They'd actually done better than Hardison's original estimate, too, because their plane got in early, at 7:26. But that was still 21 minutes behind the girls' flight, which had been right on time at 7:05. Eliot was right… a lot could happen during a window like that. There was no sign of the girls at the airport, and all that Hardison could learn from hacking the security feeds in the building was that they had taken a cab into the city. Even the metro would have been more helpful - more cameras - but in a taxi… they were ghosts now.

He tried not to think too much about Parker, because that shot him right into a vortex of worry. He would start to blame himself for not seeing in her eyes what she was about to do, for not hearing it in her voice when they'd talked together in her hotel room. He couldn't shake the feeling that he should have known her well enough to see this coming. Despite her best intentions, the last time Parker had done something like this and gone rogue, she'd been trapped inside Wakefield Agricultural Worldwide. They'd barely survived that ordeal, and that had been working with the whole team, plus Archie Leach. This time it was just Hardison and Eliot against the whole damn world.

But, the best thing he could do for her right now was focus. _Get it together, Hardison_.

At least this hotel room was a significantly nicer base of operations than the last one. With a little bit of time that he hadn't had in the midst of their Pacific Northwest escape, and since their faces weren't likely to be posted all over Paris anytime soon - knock on wood - Hardison had inserted them into a suite at the Mandarin Oriental, a five-star joint on Rue Saint-Honoré in the heart of the fashion district.

"This is more like it," he said, dropping his duffel bags in one of the bedrooms and returning to the common space. "At least we can search for Parker without worrying about bedbugs."

Eliot, luggage-less, glanced around the luxurious accommodations, feet apart and arms crossed. He hadn't said much since they arrived in Paris, but it was more of a contemplative silence than a furious one, which was a huge relief.

"Whatcha thinkin', Lincoln?" Hardison ventured.

"We're going to need a few things."

"Why? You got a plan?"

"Beginnings of one, anyway. Let's go over what we know. Pull up Gray's file again."

"Can do. And, now that we know who she really is, the background dirt I can dig up might be more helpful." He pulled his laptop out of his backpack and immediately set to work, taking advantage of the fastest Wi-Fi signals within a three-block radius. "All right. Here we go. Hey, tell you what - hook this cable up to the TV - yeah, yeah, right there. No… no, it's on the - no, on the back - Eliot, for the love of all that is electronic, you need some serious help, man."

"Get up and do it yourself, Hardison!"

"You act like you ain't got two eyes. Find the hole that fits the end. Didn't you ever play Tetris or nothin'?"

"Sorry, I was too busy playing sports and getting dates," growled Eliot as he looked behind the television again. "Not that you'd know anything about that."

"Whatever, man. That was back in the stone age. Now we livin' in the age of the - "

"Don't even finish that sentence. I will rip out your larynx."

Hardison's hand dramatically flew to his chest as if he'd been wounded. "It hurts my feelings that you feel the need to resort to threats. If I was actually scared of you, I would've high-tailed it out of there back in Seattle. Plug the damn cord in."

Eliot muttered something that sounded dangerous and inappropriate for viewers under age thirteen, but Hardison smiled slightly and breathed a little easier. This was a rhythm he could work with. Even if it meant dealing with insults and empty threats, better for Eliot to be putting up with banter than stuck in his own head. That was when Hardison had to start worrying.

"There," said the hitter. "Is that it?" The enormous plasma TV came to life with the display of Hardison's laptop.

"Hey, not bad." Hardison offered a thumbs up and started pulling up files. "All right. Briefing time."

It had been weird enough to brief when it was just the three of them. And then there were two.

_No, Hardison, don't think like that. The team is going to be fine. The team is going to be fine._

"Okay," he started. "Morgan Gray, alias Charlotte Dahl. Turned thirty this past December, joined the CIA when she was twenty-two and got her first assignment at twenty-three. Looks like…yeah, I can get her marks from the Farm. So, she tested out in the top ten percent in basic tactics and protocol, average in marksmanship, but top of the class in interpersonal exercises."

Eliot grunted and sat down on one of the long sofas that anchored the perimeter of the room, each upholstered with bold geometric shapes. "So she's basically a grifter," he said. It was a statement, not a question. His eyes flickered like he might be on the hunt for another floor lamp.

"Well… technically what she does is called 'asset cultivation and espionage,' but, yeah. She's like the grifter version of a privateer. She does what she does for the government instead of herself."

"What do we know about her before the Agency?"

"Georgetown School of Foreign Service, International Politics major with proficiency in Arabic. So that, at least, was actually the truth. Her parents are Duncan and Mariam Gray. Mariam used to be a high-profile K Street lobbyist for the Armenian diaspora, and Duncan, or should I say _Lieutenant_ Duncan Gray, is the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance."

"Her dad's in the Department of Defense."

"Yep. Looks like it."

Eliot shook his head and massaged his temples with the thumb and middle finger of his right hand. "Okay. Hot-shot DC pedigree."

"Well, Daddy might have gotten her the job, but she's done pretty well for herself. Look at this list of assignments."

Eliot took in the wall of text scrolling down the screen. "There are really squirrely areas on here. You're right. She must be good, or she wouldn't have made it out alive from some of these places."

"Heck, she must be good, or she wouldn't have fooled us."

The glare the hitter shot across the room clearly said, _'Thanks for the reminder' _in a very sarcastic yet non-verbal way.

Hardison quickly threw something else up on the screen. "Here's what we got from the French domestic intelligence case file. Bare bones… just a couple of background checks, including the Dahl alias that tipped me off to check the Langley servers. Okay, let me…" He ran a couple of scripts, decoded a password, and was soon into the personal files of the case's principal investigator. "Bingo. I love Wi-Fi. I also love the Cloud. Do you know how easy it is for me to take stuff stored in - "

"Hardison. Geek spiral."

"Right. Sorry. Anyway, check this out. From the files of the guy who died in the apartment explosion, which he was keeping off of his work servers and weren't destroyed because, you guessed it, they were in the Cloud." He zoomed in on a personal photograph of the agent, taken from a small folder of vacation pictures, and matched it to the personnel files of the Direction Centrale du Rensignement Intérieur. "His name was Gérard Nejem. Looks like Nejem was working undercover with Libyan extremists - here are all his case notes about it - and he red flagged… hey, he red-flagged that guy Gray was talking about, Carson McMaster. As a possible financier for the Libyans. Hold up a second… there's an audio diary file."

The speakers on the television crackled, and then a tenor voice began speaking in French. "C'est Officier Nejem. Aujourd'hui je suis allé au camp de réfugies. Pendant que j'étais là…"

"Okay, uno momento…" said Hardison. "Running translation program on it… now."

The video restarted, this time with the French speech at a lower volume, and a computerized English voice over top of it, spitting out the translation.

"This is Special Agent Nejem," said the semi-creepy robot voice. He should look into improving that, maybe give it Halle Berry's honey-sweet cadence, or something. "Today I went to the refugee camp. While I was there, I tailed known members of the group with which I have been undercover for six months. I overheard a conversation between these men and Mr. Carson McMaster, an attaché at the American embassy. They were discussing payment for a planned terror attack in Paris. Unfortunately, I was not able to learn much more, as I had to quickly disappear from my hiding place when the meeting broke up."

"This is exactly what Gray told us," said Hardison. Why would she go through the elaborate charade of pretending she was someone else, only to tell them the truth?

"Yeah, except she pretended it had happened to her," said Eliot.

All right, maybe _that_ hadn't been the truth.

Hardison went back a few folders and started flipping through more of Nejem's files related to McMaster. There were a lot of them; the guy had been incredibly - overly - thorough. "Where's… ah ha! Check it. Surveillance photos from the next day." With a keystroke, he displayed them full-screen on the television.

The photographs, taken from a few different angles outside of what must have been the American embassy, showed a tall, fair man in his mid to late forties shaking hands with, and then ushering inside, none other than Morgan Gray.

"That McMaster?" Eliot asked.

"Sure is. And Nejem made the connection we didn't - McMaster is the division head for the CIA in France. 'Attaché,' my ass." Was there anyone working at the embassy who was actually a _diplomat_?

Eliot stood back up and started pacing. Hardison surreptitiously glanced at him to make sure he wasn't making any sudden moves toward light fixtures. "So Gray knows McMaster," muttered the hitter, probably more for his own benefit than Hardison's. His tone was absent, like he was just talking out loud to fit a piece into a giant puzzle in his head. "They're both CIA, she comes to Paris, and they meet."

"Based on these notes - and Nejem took a lot of them - Gray arrived that day, _after_ the refugee camp incident. I don't know what that means yet, but they're obviously connected."

Eliot stopped and peered at the screen. "All right, let's start with Nejem, like how Gray picked up his story. And who took him out. Maybe that'll give us a clue about what Gray is up to, and why she tried to lure us out here. We need to figure out if she's working with McMaster ASAP. That means finding people who might know both Nejem and McMaster. Print off some photos."

"Aw, man," groaned Hardison. "You're gonna say we have to talk to the Libyans, aren't you? Ain't you ever seen _Back to the Future_? You shouldn't mess with Libyans."

"No." Eliot was still staring at the television, at the pictures of Gray and McMaster, like he could uncover all of their secrets with his eyes. "The Libyans shouldn't mess with us."

Hardison stopped himself from smiling at that, but he allowed a mental high five. Floor lamp smashing be damned, Eliot had his job face on. The chips were down, and the odds weren't great, but at least they were back in the game.

Hardison wasn't really into consulting "the odds," anyway. That was the Head's thing, not the Gut's.

_Hold on, Parker, _he thought._ Your boys are coming for you._


	6. Chapter 6

_Well, we're back to a more normal chapter length. Sorry. (Sort of. I'm only human, after all. I have typing limitations.) But, thanks again for reading! Also, there were just some super nice reviews this past week, and I wanted to say an extra thank you to those incredibly kind and thoughtful souls. I walked on a cloud after reading them. You guys rule, and I hope you continue to enjoy the story! Long live Leverage._

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**Chapter 6**

_Parker_

"Did you know," said Parker as she adjusted the satchel on her shoulder, "that the American embassy in Paris is the oldest diplomatic mission of the United States?"

"Uh…no," said Charlotte Dahl. "No, I did not know that."

Parker beamed up at the building towering over the sidewalk before them. "Greek revival. Look at those columns. Mmm mmm…yeah, it's too bad you can't steal buildings. I'd carry this one around in my pocket." She paused, considering. "Well, actually, maybe I'd take the Sphinx first, and at least part of the Great Wall of China… you know, now that I think about it, that would be the world's greatest - "

"It's a nice building," said her companion, who didn't look as excited about the possibilities of pilfering real estate.

Parker turned her smile to Charlotte Dahl, unfazed by her lack of enthusiasm. She was just nervous. Parker had dealt with other people's nervousness loads of times. The key was to nudge the nervous person forward, to make them take the first step. Like Hardison. Afraid to jump off a building? Nothing a little push couldn't fix.

"It's pretty inside, too," Parker assured her client. Security cameras and reinforced doors… a few keypads. Glorious. "You'll like it."

"You've… been here before?"

Parker thought back to the last time she'd stood in front of the Embassy of the United States in Paris - as opposed to the Ambassador's residence, which had actually been more recently - and how she had avoided a gaggle of security guards by flipping over the edge of the roof and crouching in the pediment over the main entrance. That had been pretty fun - maybe she could squeeze something like that in while she was in town. Or at least rappel down the Eiffel Tower. Best date idea EVER.

"Yep. Fond memories."

Charlotte Dahl blinked and glanced down at the costume Parker had helped her pick out. It had been hard to find such blatantly obnoxious clothing in a fashionable city like Paris, but Parker had sniffed out some tourist traps and made out like a bandit. (Ha! Literally!) With ill-fitting blue jeans, bright white sneakers, an "I (heart) Paris" t-shirt, and a big red parka, Charlotte Dahl blended right in with the hoards of American tourists flooding the City of Louvre - achem, _Love _- in the beautiful late spring sunshine.

Sophie would have been proud; the clueless client looked perfect for her role. Now she just had to follow the plan.

"Remember what to do?" Parker asked.

"Walk into the embassy, get in line for an emergency replacement passport appointment. When you give me the signal, I pretend to faint. Stay out two minutes, wake up, say that I'm fine. And… then…?"

"That's it. That's all I need."

"And… what are you doing again?"

Parker patted Charlotte Dahl on the shoulder. "It's probably better if you just let me do it. I don't want to get you in any trouble… well, any more than you're already in!"

"I… well… okay…"

"Easy, right? Even you can handle it."

The other woman frowned. "Even me? What's that supposed to - "

"Okay! Let's do it!" Parker gave a quick thumbs up. When Charlotte Dahl didn't move, she raised her eyebrows in encouragement and whispered, "Now. Let's do it now."

"Oh! All right… okay… sorry!" Charlotte Dahl smiled her usual super-awkward, apologetic smile and sort of tottered away toward the main entrance to the embassy.

As her distraction moved into position, Parker touched her index fingers together in glee. The boys were really missing out. This was going to be fun.

Parker had given it a lot of thought as they'd hopped over the Atlantic, and she'd determined that the best place to start, based on what they knew, was at the embassy. While it wasn't super likely that an attaché like Carson McMaster would just have records lying around of his support for extremists, something like an appointment book or receipts for wire transfers or large cash withdrawals might offer a solid lead to go on. Parker had considered heading to the refugee camp where Charlotte Dahl worked and approaching the problem stakeout-style, but if someone was trying to kill Charlotte Dahl it was because they knew who she was and what she had heard. That meant the camp was probably not the safest place for her to be. And, though Parker could have done camp recon on her own, the embassy was still where they could guarantee getting their hands on something. If nothing else, they could tail McMaster from here. Plan B. And the refugee camp could be Plan C.

She grinned, thinking about the team's snarky discussions of Nate's excessive scheming, of plans past even M - where Hardison supposedly died. That briefing and debriefing atmosphere had been so… light. So easy. Why was everything with just Eliot and Hardison so hard?

She refused to accept that things would stay the way they had for these past three months. That's what this job was all about, wasn't it? Redemption. Showing them what they could do.

Because - and she was scared to even entertain the idea, so she mostly just pretended she'd never acknowledged it - if this didn't work… she knew Eliot really would leave. To keep them safe. Totally ignoring whether that was really the most important thing he could do or not.

Out of habit, she checked her satchel one more time, mostly to give her fingers something to do besides reach into the pockets of the people walking past her. She didn't used to think like this. She didn't used to think about other people at all. That had been a lot easier.

Hmm… too much thinking about thinking. To make it stop, she got going. Doing had always helped put her brain on pause. When it was just instincts and movement, that was safe and comfortable, a space she had carved out to escape from her own head.

Her own slim-fitting clothes and side-braided hair didn't grab any second glances from the passersby as she flanked the embassy building on its right side, where it ran right up against the street. She crossed the narrow road there to use the sidewalk on the other side, deftly avoiding the gaze of the _gendarmerie_ officer on the corner. No fence to climb here… just cameras and an employees-only entrance, which she carefully approached.

She pulled an mp3 player out of the satchel and placed the chunky headphones attached to it over her ears. Then she lit a cigarette lifted from a cab driver, with a match from the book that she kept in her pocket for when she got bored, and found the place in front of the side entrance where she would be just within sight of the door's main camera but only one step away from its blind spot underneath. Finally, she approached the location, turned at the very last second to back into the camera's view, and pretended to take a few long drags on the death stick.

The response time of the embassy guards was like clockwork; not thirty seconds had passed since she'd posted herself at the entrance before she heard the door open behind her.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but you're not allowed to be back here."

Parker waited, tapping her toe a little bit in time to imaginary music. She thought about humming, too, but she didn't want to oversell the bit. Sophie was always telling her to give people the idea, but let them come to their own conclusions. Too much, and you ended up like Hardison as the Ice Man: hostage of some Russians and forcing your friends to bail you out with an incredi-heist.

Right now, she had only Charlotte Dahl as backup… so she needed to be extra careful.

"Ma'am?" tried the guard again. Then, in American-accented French, "Excusez-moi, madamoiselle?"

One more second… be patient… and…

She felt a hand on her shoulder.

There.

She screamed, flinging the cigarette and mp3 player into the air as she spun around, at the same time stumbling toward the entrance, right into the camera's blind spot. When she "lost" her balance, she caught herself with her hands on the guard's chest, one of which smoothly unclipped his personnel badge and slipped it into a side pocket of her satchel.

"Pardonnez-moi!" she exclaimed, reaching up to take off the headphones and hang them around her neck. She couldn't think of anything else to say in French except, _"crèpe" _or _"omelette du fromage,"_ though, so she muttered something nonsensical under her breath instead.

"That's all right, ma'am," said the guard, who looked as if he might have actually been startled by her fake reaction. He stooped to pick up the mp3 player, and as he bent over, Parker glanced past him through the open door.

Just one guard at this entrance, exactly like she remembered. Good. No one else to notice the missing badge for a while. She'd picked her mark well.

He stood up again and handed the mp3 player back to her, but she didn't smile. "Americans…" she said disdainfully, with the best French accent she could - better than his, anyway - and stalked away from the entrance. _"Leave them wanting more," _Sophie would have said. Or something. Maybe Parker shouldn't have zoned out so much during those monologues about acting technique. It had been so much easier when the grifter was just inside her ear.

But the guard didn't follow her or anything… so she must have gotten a thing or two right.

The main entrance's security was a completely different game altogether. Here, visitors passed through a couple of checkpoints, oodles of security personnel milled about, passports (if you hadn't lost yours) were checked, bags were searched… much more of a circus. Fortunately for Parker, the circus was perfect cover for what she was about to do.

Getting through the checkpoints was easy as pie - even a little fun. She had to leave her satchel at the door, but it was practically empty, anyway, once she put on the blazer that had been folded away while she was stealing the side entrance guard's badge. The badge itself she tucked into the right side of her bra, so that when the metal detector went off at the clip, she could just shrug and blame "the underwire." Guards didn't like to talk about stuff like that.

Past the checkpoints, the big marble lobby reminded her of a train station, with roped-off lines and counters with consular personnel sitting behind them. This was as far as most people got, but Parker was planning on going a whole lot deeper into the building. That meant distraction time.

She glanced around while pretending to check the appointment card she'd "borrowed" from a folder that had walked past under someone's arm. Charlotte Dahl was right in position: in the middle of the long "lost passport" line that Parker had known would be overcrowded during a high-traffic tourist time like this. Pickpockets were extremely active in Paris, particularly around landmarks, and every day hundreds of passports went missing with peoples' purses and wallets. And, fortunately, a nice, crowded embassy was perfect for Parker's plan. It was like Paris itself wanted them to do this job.

_"See?"_ Parker wanted to say to the absent Eliot and Hardison. Hopefully they were on their way and soon she could tell them to their faces. _"Even Paris wants us here."_

_ "Cut the chitchat and get it done, Parker,"_ Eliot would have said. Or growled menacingly. Or tried to drag her back to the U.S. without a word.

Right… that was why getting a head start on the boys had been essential for this to work.

The agreed-upon signal that Charlotte Dahl was supposed to be waiting for had to be both obvious and forgettable, so Parker had decided to rely on a sound instead of something visual. Just in case her accomplice wasn't paying attention - normal people weren't exactly known for their powers of observation; that was part of what helped Parker do her job so well - a sound would be easier to only have to do once. The metal stanchions holding up the ropes for the lines had immediately come to mind.

Now she casually went over to one and practically mowed it down, knocking it to the ground with a booming clang that echoed throughout the cavernous room.

"Sorry!" she apologized with a hushed whisper and winning smile, and she glanced around at the people surrounding her and ducked her head a little, as if in embarrassment. That allowed her to look straight at Charlotte Dahl.

Charlotte Dahl looked back, but instead of suddenly collapsing in a contrived faint, she opened her eyes wide at Parker and… did she subtly shake her head?

_What?_ Parker communicated back with a quick bugging out of her own eyes. _Come on, faint. Do it now!_

But the other woman was definitely shaking her head as she took a step forward in line. She looked away for a second, then back at Parker, and gave a microscopic jerk of her head toward the left side of the room.

Parker followed the gesture. The only thing interesting over there was the very door Parker herself was about to sneak through, the one that led into a wing of offices.

She glanced back at Charlotte Dahl, but now her accomplice wasn't even facing her anymore. She was hunched over, turned completely the other way.

Parker crossed her arms and sighed. Really? Was fake fainting _that_ terrifying? Why were people such weenies?

"Morgan?" said some guy.

Parker turned toward the voice, wondering for a second if he was talking to her. But the stocky young man who'd spoken was staring right past her. Her heartbeat slowed a little. She had to admit… it would have been nice to have Hardison and Eliot in her ear right now; she was a little jumpy.

"Morgan? Oh my goodness… Morgan!" People turned to stare at the stocky guy as he moved toward the counter. "Hey! Mo! It's me!" Practically everyone in the building was looking at him now.

Wait, no. Not everyone. Not Charlotte Dahl. Charlotte Dahl wasn't moving. She might not have even been breathing.

That was, until she turned, flashed the guy what could only be described as a _vicious _smile, and said, "Hey, Dave. Wake the dead, why don't you?"

Even if the entire embassy had exploded with wailing alarms at that very moment, it wouldn't have been louder than the warning bells going off in Parker's head. She processed a number of key points in the span of two quick, preparatory breaths.

First, Charlotte Dahl had just responded to the name _Morgan_. Unless that was her middle name, that was pretty suspicious.

Second, the stocky guy - the man who she had called_ Dave _- had an embassy personnel badge clipped to the front of his collared shirt. Charlotte Dahl knew someone who worked at the embassy. But she hadn't said anything about that when they'd hatched this plan.

Third, Charlotte Dahl - Morgan - whoever - suddenly looked completely different. Obviously her face, body, and clothes hadn't technically _changed_, but in an instant all the parts were seemingly rearranged, like the woman standing in the lost passport line was Charlotte Dahl's evil twin or something. For one thing, she had great posture instead of rolled forward, slouching shoulders. Now that she was standing up straight, Parker noticed for the first time how tall she was: taller than Parker, as tall as or maybe a little bit taller than Eliot.

Her face was different, too. Charlotte Dahl had wide, lost eyes, and she always looked like she had forgotten something somewhere and couldn't decide whether or not to go back for it. But this… _person_… radiated control and annoyance. Her stance and the look in her eye were familiar. For a second, Parker wondered if she was staring at some weird, taller version of Sophie, but then she changed her mind; this woman didn't have _grace_ like Sophie's. Sophie, as herself, always reminded Parker of a queen. Her confidence seemed so easy, and her smile could charm anybody. Charlotte Dahl/Morgan/Not Tall Sophie, on the other hand, made Parker think of the female agents in the FBI and Homeland Security that had tried to pin down the Leverage team so many times: confident, maybe, but a little… prickly?

_"There might be a grifter in you yet,"_ said an imaginary Sophie in Parker's head. _"You're learning to discern things about people by looking at them."_

A grifter. That was it.

Parker blinked, and she suddenly realized what was going on. Charlotte Dahl _did_ remind Parker of Sophie in a certain way, but now she knew why: the woman been pulling a con. She'd just emerged from it in this moment, shedding it like a skin.

The mental warning bells were more insistent now. Parker blew out the last of the second breath. Her muscles tensed as she coiled like a spring to explode into motion. She had to move before the hordes of security guards descended. But she didn't quite yet.

The Woman Formerly Known as Charlotte Dahl was looking right at her again, and Parker was able to read her lips:

_"Parker. Please. Trust me."_

Well, that settled it. Nothing says _'Don't trust me'_ like _'Trust me.'_

Warning bells wailing, she ran.


	7. Chapter 7

_Sliiiightly early this week. Happy Thursday night/Friday! Have a great weekend!_

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**Chapter 7**

_Eliot_

The refugee camp wasn't exactly what Eliot had been expecting.

He'd worked and even lived in his fair share of war zone refugee camps, the vast majority of which had been little more than cities of tents and lean-tos pitched in fields or over large tracts of unfarmed wasteland - insufficiently stocked, awful to secure, and breeding grounds for disease. But this camp, just outside the city of Paris proper, wasn't much of a "camp" at all; it was an overcrowded, noisy neighborhood of government-built apartment buildings that was part of a much larger low-income housing project. Of course, that didn't mean it didn't have all of the problems of other camps, but it did introduce a whole different set of variables than more temporary structures would have. He would have to recalculate their approach somewhat.

He looked up as they made their way down one of the streets on the outskirts of the camp, difficult but not impossible to distinguish from the rest of the _banlieue_ - the term for a French "suburb" - by the strength and prevalence of Maghrebi Arabic over French in conversations. Some of these buildings were twenty stories high, offering countless perfect sightlines for snipers. Worse, the structures were laid out in dizzying mazes of alleys and dead-ends to the point that the exit route he was sketching in his head required constant revision and currently looked like the erratic crayon drawing of a two year-old.

The Parisian metro didn't come out this far, so they'd had to take a morning commuter train covered in profane graffiti for the hour-long journey. Hardison had spent most of the trip typing away on his mini laptop thingie while Eliot leveled menacing glares at the knots of rough-looking young men who might have been thinking about getting their hands on the gadget. There were a lot of those types on the train.

Eliot was at once wary of and sympathetic for the youth who called this place their home. Disenfranchised men without employment or direction weren't a phenomenon of just one part of the world, and he recognized in their eyes the same hunger and desperation for something, _anything_, besides their reality that he had seen in the faces of guys from Boston to Bangkok… that he had used to see in the mirror when he could bring himself to look. That recognition tugged at his desire for action, his instinct to draw something out of them that they didn't know was there, that had _worth_. But their desperation also made them reckless, and recklessness was dangerous because it could be unpredictable; it was his job to deal with the threat, not its source. There had been a time when he'd been able to offer leadership to guys like these, but that had been a long time ago, before he had become someone he'd rather kids like them not look up to, anyhow.

The best that he could do for them was deter them with his scowl, keep them from making trouble with him and Hardison before they had to regret it.

Everyone on the train had left them alone.

"So… what exactly are we looking for?" asked Hardison when they reached an intersection.

Straight-ahead, right, left - it all looked the same: children playing soccer in the street, women hanging their wash out to dry, vendors hawking wares, teenagers on bicycles dodging pedestrians. If it hadn't been for the ethnic makeup of the citizens, this could have been any old street corner in Hong Kong or Beirut or New Delhi. Thinking about this place as somehow being special because it was a refugee camp was probably a mistake. They needed to start conceptualizing it as part of a city, with city dynamics and city establishments… with a city underbelly.

"A betting house," Eliot said, deciding. He grabbed Hardison's arm and yanked him into the shadow of the nearest building.

"Wha - Hey!"

"You got any clothes in that backpack?"

Hardison cleared his throat. "I… well, yes. I've got a few things. You know, just in case the checked bag gets lost by the airli - "

Eliot unceremoniously pulled the bag from Hardison's shoulders and unzipped it, crouching on the ground to rifle through it. Besides the mini laptop, the hacker also had a tablet - both of these in addition to the full-size laptop he'd left in their hotel room... what need could he _possibly_ have for so many damn screens? - and a toiletry bag and, yes, a wad of clothes. Upon further inspection, however, the "clothes" only consisted of three hilariously embarrassing pairs of boxers , a nerdy graphic t-shirt, and a couple of scarves.

Eliot eyed Hardison with a slight smirk and indicated the boxers. "Lucky Charms? Really?"

"They were a thoughtful birthday present," said Hardison defensively. Even his chocolate skin couldn't hide a flush.

"Whatever, man. I _really_ don't want to know." He stood up and started shrugging off his leather jacket, glad it had been his outerwear of choice when leaving the brew pub - man, that seemed like _days_ ago now. The hoodie he had layered underneath he tugged over his head, stuffing it into the backpack, leaving him in a plain, heather gray tee. "Trade me your jacket."

Hardison raised an eyebrow. "Why are we taking off our clothes?"

"Dammit, Hardison, just give me your freakin' jacket and put mine on."

"All right, all right. Feel free to tone down the Mr. Pushy." The hacker peeled off his structured canvas jacket and handed it over, taking Eliot's leather jacket with his other hand and sliding his arms into it.

Yes, that was better. Eliot's jacket was almost too short for Hardison, giving it the right feel. Instead of looking like he was ready for back room billiards and beer, Hardison managed to make the leather European. Meanwhile, the slim cut of Hardison's garment on Eliot was more streamlined than the more utilitarian outfit had been. To complete the transformation, Eliot selected the plainest scarf in the backpack and wrapped it around his neck. Now they might actually pass for Frenchmen.

He zipped the bag back up and pushed it back into Hardison's arms. "Here," he said, and put his hand into the left side pocket of the leather jacket, pulling out a beanie and shoving it against the hacker's chest.

"You just keep one of these in your pocket?" grumbled Hardison as he put the hat on.

"I may not travel with luggage, but there are some wardrobe staples you don't go leaving home without."

"When this is over, Eliot," said Hardison with a flat look, "you and I need to have a serious conversation about what you consider 'a wardrobe staple.'" The quote marks were audible.

"I ain't the one with General Mills underwear, man," said Eliot, shrugging and patting Hardison patronizingly on the arm. "C'mon. Time to find a room full of gamblers."

"In a refugee camp?"

Eliot explained as they crossed the street. "We need to think about this place as an extension of the neighborhood. These buildings weren't built specifically for refugees; they were existing government projects that the refugees must have been moved into as a quick solution. The line between the refugee buildings and the rest of the _banlieue_ is essentially non-existent, especially since most of the lower-income residents in this area are first or second-generation African immigrants anyway. Now, _banlieues _are known for their rising crime rates. That's where the _Milieu_ comes in, probably established here like anywhere else."

"The what? The _meow_?"

"Mee-lee-yuh. French organized crime. We don't know how much government-sponsored oversight there is of the camp, but you can bet the local _Milieu_ chapter has its finger on the pulse. If Nejem, McMaster, or Gray was around here, they'll know."

"Ah, yes," said Hardison with unconcealed sarcasm. "No matter where in the world you are, you can always count on your local mobsters for customer service. I'm sure they'll be delighted to help us out." His voice returned to normal, but he crossed his arms. "So, what, we're looking for an extra-legal casino?"

"Sort of. The French government regulates some types of gambling, but others are illegal - like spread betting. But, it's still rampantly popular. Like any good organized crime crew, the local _Milieu _will inevitably be capitalizing on that action."

"And we're expecting to just find the place where they do this out here in the open, on the street?"

"Not a ton of police presence in these areas," said Eliot. "A storefront wouldn't be as ridiculous as it sounds. But our best bet is to find some patrons… and then follow them back to the hive."

Hardison's eyes narrowed as he began surveying passersby. "See, my brand of criminal activity was conducted on the couch, not in basements or crack houses or following seedy-looking dudes back to their motherships of disrepute."

"Then it's a damn good thing you aren't trying to do this by yourself, isn't it?"

"You're right," said Hardison casually. Too casually. "Without you to guide me through bad guys' lairs and modes of thinking, I'm just a clueless guy with some gadgets. I'll get eaten alive on my own."

Eliot silently ran through a creative string of expletives as he mentally kicked himself. He had to stop letting Hardison lure him into these half-conversations about the fate of the team.

"There," he said, brushing past the subject and pointing to a group of middle-aged men at their one o' clock. Turning down a street between two apartment buildings, the men were all hunched over, looking at something one of them was carrying. "Hardison, is there a soccer game on right now?"

Hardison muttered something that sounded like _'Do I look like Google?'_,but he whipped out his international-capable smartphone - another damn screen - and jabbed at it with his thumbs for a few seconds. "Yeah. Looks like Barcelona and Manchester City. Champions League."

"I think we might've found the hive."

A glance down the narrow street confirmed Eliot's guess. A dingy neon sign above a plain but obviously well-used door announced the presence of the "Café du Loup," but if it was actually a café, Eliot was Miss Teen USA. The last of the men from the group they'd identified slipped in as Eliot and Hardison hovered out of sight around the corner.

Imagining a few scenarios for what might happen once they walked in, Eliot said, "Keep your mouth shut. Let me do the talking."

"What? Why? I'm the better grifter."

"Can you grift in another language?" replied Eliot, unimpressed. "Because everyone in there probably speaks Maghrebi Arabic or French."

"Oh, and you speak Magical Arabic, too, huh?"

"It's a very distinctive family of dialects."

"That wasn't a yes."

"Just follow my lead," said Eliot. He _didn't_ speak Maghrebi Arabic - not much, at any rate - but he was pretty fluent in Egyptian Arabic and some of the dialects of the Persian Gulf, like Iraqi, so he expected to be able to get by. He hoped so, anyway, because he definitely didn't speak French.

Well, at least not any more than what he'd learned from hot French girls. And that pretty much amounted to _'Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?'_

The door opened onto a small landing in a stairwell, the steps of which led down into the building's windowless basement. Eliot's senses were on high alert as they descended. Loud music - French hip hop - reverberated throughout the "Café," which took up the entire sublevel. Knots of men crowded in front of screens mounted around the room, their voices crescendoing at intervals in response to the soccer match Hardison had identified. Others moved from group to group, collecting bets and crumpled Euro bills. The air, hot and stale, was tinged with the sharp scent of grain alcohol and the old smoke of countless cigarettes. Discarded butts peppered the floor.

"Good to know there're sketchy dives in every corner of the world," Hardison muttered, but then grunted as Eliot elbowed him in the side.

"Shut. Up."

A cursory scan of the room revealed no apparent VIP tables, which meant a back room. Whoever was in charge would be close by if they weren't walking the floor.

The obvious candidate was a door on the other side of the room, behind the bar. A man stood beside it, smoking with one hand and texting with the other, seemingly uninterested in his surroundings, but his weight distribution told Eliot everything he needed to know. A sentry.

"There," he murmured, and slightly inclined his head to indicate the door. He led the way over to it, and the texting, smoking man glanced up as they got close. He said something in French, but it was tinged with the other accent Eliot had heard on the street.

Eliot took a chance. "As salam aleykum," he greeted the man in Arabic. The members of the _Milieu_ would know he wasn't a native speaker on sight, but he mostly just wanted to keep them away from French. If they so much as said, _"Bonjour,"_ his planned cover would be shot straight to hell.

The man's eyebrows knit together, and he took them both in with a long look, but he offered the traditional reply:

"Wa alaykum as salam."

So far, so good. As long as they stayed far, far away from French.

* * *

_Hardison_

Eliot's jacket was a little too short, and in it Hardison felt a little bit like he'd been shrink-wrapped. It took some serious willpower to not constantly tug at the sleeves, which didn't quite reach to his wrists, but looking like an uncomfortable teenager who'd just hit a growth spurt would probably have destroyed whatever Eliot's plan was, so the hacker kept his hands firmly planted in the jacket's front pockets.

Typical Eliot. Giving cryptic directions and a half-glare that said, _'Don't ask why - just do it,'_ leading the way into a seedy gambling den in the middle of Super Sketchyville, France. And now they were chatting up some chain smoker in Arabic. At least, it had to be Arabic, because Eliot sure as heck wasn't speaking French.

Not that Hardison had seen any refugee camps firsthand before, but this wasn't exactly what came up on a Wikipedia search.

He caught a glimpse of himself in one of the mirrors lining the wall behind the Café du Loup's bar and couldn't help but note the striking resemblance both he and Eliot bore in their traded, rearranged clothes to the betting house's patrons. He had to hand it to the hitter there; they blended in. At least _that_ element of Eliot's plan was clear. They were supposed to be French. Or refugees. Or… well… they were supposed to be something that wasn't who they actually were.

It would have been nice if Eliot had, you know, explained what he was going for here. But, then, communication wasn't exactly Eliot Spencer's wheelhouse.

It was a hell of a lot harder than it looked to be an effective leader - Hardison knew that. He'd experienced the difficulties of it for himself over and over during the past three months. But, even so, it frustrated him - even pissed him off sometimes - when Eliot steamrollered right over him and sat in the captain's chair without even pausing to discuss things. It had been happening more and more lately, right up to their failed job, with Eliot swooping in and taking charge without so much as an acknowledgement that he was doing it. Honestly, he probably didn't even realize what he was doing, but that was annoying, too, like he couldn't be bothered to consider anybody else. Of course Hardison didn't want to be a dictator or anything - heck, he didn't even _want_ to lead most of the time these days - but he was beginning to doubt whether the hitter really thought he was the smartest guy he knew, after all. Whether Eliot still trusted him.

Whether they were friends.

Hardison wanted to rub his eyes, but he resisted that urge, too. How he longed for Nate's clear, precise directions and explanations and leadership. Nate had known how to deal with each member of the team and how to process their divergent points of view. And, if he'd ever actually been hurt by any of them, he sure managed to play it close to the vest. Hardison, on the other hand, had a heart-on-his-sleeve problem.

_Guess you don't appreciate what you've got until it's gone_, he thought.

Wasn't that the catchphrase of the week?

Up until this point, he'd willed himself to optimism about hearing out a final client, finding Parker, hunting down this CIA agent she'd disappeared with, and keeping Eliot on track. Someone had to have a good attitude. But now, watching Eliot communicate in what could have been Klingon, for all Hardison understood, and flying blind into whatever the hitter had planned, he was beginning to feel the weight of it all. Worst of all, he was beginning to wonder if maybe Eliot was right, when it came down to it. Maybe the team _was_ broken, and he'd just refused to see it. Maybe he'd willfully ignored what his gut was actually telling him.

The man talking to Eliot slid his phone into his skinny jeans and extinguished his cigarette on the door frame, producing a small shower of ashes. One side of his mouth quirked up slightly, and he said something that had Eliot nodding.

Then, before Hardison could really register what was happening, the door the man had been guarding was open, and they were being ushered through.

The room beyond the threshold reminded Hardison of the back room of McRory's, complete with poker table. Five men sat around it, flanked by a few more muscle-types standing along the room's perimeter. Apparently some things really did transcend cultures… like mean-looking criminals playing cards.

As Eliot, Hardison, and the doorman stepped in, the men at the table regarded them lazily, but the guys standing against the walls took a few steps closer. Some of them put hands behind their backs, like they might be going for a weapon. Hardison's heartbeat increased in tempo, though he tried to keep his expression confident and unaffected.

Eliot, too, took a step into the room. Hardison watched the hitter's gaze flick around as he absorbed the kind of information that he could process almost instantly, calculating angles and thinking about fighting patterns, if it came to that. For his part, Hardison was a little nervous, but _this_, at least, was what Eliot did, and there wasn't any going back now. Now all he could do was hope that whatever Eliot had said to get them in here wouldn't also get them killed.

The man sitting closest to the door stood up, discarding his cards with the flick of a wrist. The table's other occupants watched the movement closely, making it obvious that he was the one in charge.

The man asked a question in Arabic; Eliot replied, seemingly at ease. After a more prolonged exchange, though, Hardison noticed a subtle shift in Eliot's expression, a shiftiness in his eyes that made Hardison's stomach twist. An almost imperceptible note of desperation crept into the hitter's voice.

That was when things hit the fan.

The leader guy spoke again, and he pointed at Hardison. Unlike Eliot, he didn't look uncomfortable at all. In fact, he was smiling. Now he was raising his eyebrows. And now… uh oh… the smile was fading. He seemed... expectant. Like Hardison was supposed to be doing something. Well, what the hell was it? Dammit. This was what happened when Eliot ran the freakin' con.

Eliot's elbow found Hardison's ribs for the second time in ten minutes; there'd be some nice bruises to explain when they found Parker. Then their eyes met, Eliot's expression as threatening as was possible without scrunching into full-fledged demon mode.

Hardison turned his attention back to the man, who said something else while still looking right at him, so there was no ambiguity as far as who he was speaking to. Unfortunately, there was infinite ambiguity about _what_ he was saying, because it was all in French. Hardison knew that accent; he'd used it during any number of jobs. Unfortunately, he didn't actually know the language that went with the accent.

Eliot's words echoed in his mind: _Keep your mouth shut_.

To hell with that.

"Uh… oui?" he tried.

In the blink of an eye, every gun in the room was drawn and pointed right at Hardison's face.

Eliot swore under his breath. "Dammit, Hardison," he muttered.

_Oh, hell no._

"Excuse me?" Hardison snarled back at full volume. Who gave a crap if these gangster jerks heard them now? They were obviously going to kill them anyway. "Dammit, _Hardison?_ How about 'Dammit, Eliot?' What the hell kind of plan was this?"

"I told you to keep quiet." Eliot was talking normally now, too, since growling counted as normal for him. Apparently the game he'd been running was over now. Now they were just two guys in a room full of semi-automatics. Even Eliot couldn't out-maneuver nine bullets at once.

"Yeah, well what was I supposed to do with this guy talking right at me in French, huh? You could have, like, muttered what he was saying or something, you know!"

"I - " Eliot faltered slightly, then murmured something.

"What?"

"I don't speak French, all right?" he snapped.

"Wha - _really?_" Hardison couldn't help a sardonic, humorless laugh. "So, you were just gonna risk our lives, no big deal, without _speaking the damn language?"_

"I spoke freakin' Arabic, Hardison! Oh, and by the way, it was working until right about now!"

"Until somebody decided _I _was supposed to speak French! Thanks a lot for _that_, you - "

"HEY!"

Hardison jumped a little at the barked-out word. Eliot snapped to attention. They'd pretty much forgotten about the _Milieu_ guy and his goons and their guns, hadn't they?

"What's going on here?" asked the man. He moved toward them, his handgun level with Hardison's eyes the whole time.

Hardison opened his mouth to make some kind of comment about how, of course, the French mafia guy spoke _all_ the languages in the room, but his pocket chose that moment to start singing.

_"I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay_," trilled a tinny voice to an upbeat tempo. It cut through the tension in the room like a bolt of audio lightning. "_I sleep all night and I work all day."_

Hardison blinked. The man with the gun to his head cleared his throat.

"Is that your _phone_?" asked Eliot in the world's most judgmental tone. "What the hell is that song?"

"It's Monty Python, you ignorant ass. You know, the _classics_."

"No, the classics are Conway Twitty and Johnny Cash - "

"Hey! Shut up!" interjected the _Milieu_ man. Hardison felt cool metal on his skin as the barrel of the gun got pressed into his temple. "Answer it."

Hardison tried to control his breathing. His pulse was already erratic. _Please, please let it be Parker,_ he thought._ Please let it be Parker. Not a telemarketer, not Morgan Gray, but Parker. _Because they were going to need some kind of miracle to make it out of this one alive.

He reached slowly into the pocket and pulled out the phone, holding it up so that the display was visible to both Eliot and the _Milieu_ boss. _Unknown number._ After sliding his finger over the screen, he drew the device to his ear. "Hello?"

"Hardison!" exclaimed a female voice on the other end. A voice with a posh British accent and a hint of condescension.

Holy crap. That wasn't Parker _or_ Gray. And it definitely wasn't a telemarketer.

It was Sophie.


	8. Chapter 8

_Mwahaha! The long-awaited return of Nate and Sophie! I told you they'd be back..._

* * *

**Chapter 8**

_Sophie - 10 Minutes Ago_

There was nothing like a gorgeous spring day in London. Sophie felt very strongly about that.

Today was one of those perfect days when early morning clouds had dissipated into a clear, bright blue sky, and people used to taking cover all day in monochromatic buildings from the gloom outside emerged to feel the warmth of the sun on their faces. Days like this, like flawless jewels, were rare enough even in May that the entire city seemed to be bunking off - that is, "playing hooky" - and, here in St. James' Park, Sophie and Nate's picnic blanket was surrounded by like-minded souls eating and playing and sunbathing.

"What a day," murmured Sophie as she rolled up the hem of her sundress to let some sunshine soak into the skin above her knees. In about ten minutes she'd probably be red as a lobster, but until then the heat felt absolutely divine.

Nate withdrew two champagne flutes from the basket they'd brought along and skillfully popped the cork out of a bottle of prosecco. "It's certainly a far cry from Portland," he said as he poured the sparkling wine into a glass and handed it to her.

"Mmm, that's for sure." Sophie took the glass and sipped from it, smiling at the tingling bubbles on her tongue. "Though Portland did grow on me."

"I told you it would."

"No, you told me that I'd eventually figure out how to style my hair for such a rainy place."

"And you did, didn't you?"

"Nate, darling, don't ruin the moment."

She glanced around, adjusting her glamorous, oversized sunglasses. A child towing a red balloon raced by, pursued by two laughing parents. Sophie couldn't help a smile at the precious scene, though a slight pang went through her, as well. For years she'd insisted to herself that she'd be a rubbish mother, what with being an international art thief and professional grifter. But, throughout her time with the Leverage team, she'd also realized that she had quite robust maternal instincts, and there was something she cherished about that role. She might never have children of her own - it really depended on what Nate wanted, and whether she'd even be able to conceive at this point, if they tried - but Eliot, Parker, and Hardison had become…

Honestly, it sounded ridiculous to her even as she thought it, but they had become something like her children, hadn't they? The closest thing she'd ever had to them, anyway.

Parker had needed help navigating emotions, and it was Sophie who had taught her how to connect with other people. More than that, she cared about Parker's progress, wanted more for her than the solitary life of a thief. Parker, who had once stabbed a mark with a fork, was blossoming into a living, breathing, loving human being with a thing for "pretzels." Sophie's pride at having been part of that… well wasn't that the sort of thing mothers felt?

And what about Hardison? Once cocky and irresponsible, the hacker had gradually matured into his skills, displaying a work ethic and love of the con that Sophie recognized in herself. She'd taught him restraint and shaped his raw talent, molding him into a passable grifter and a valuable team player.

As for Eliot… well, he was really more like an older stepson. But, even he hadn't been unchanged by his time with the team, and Sophie liked to think that, for all their disagreements and his longtime distrust of her, she had offered him a glimpse into the power and beauty of allowing himself to feel. He hadn't come very far in expressing those feelings, necessarily, but some of his rougher edges had softened under her tutelage.

"Children" or not, thinking about the three youngest members of Leverage Consulting and Associates - or was it Leverage Incorporated these days? Or hadn't there been talk of "Leverage International" or some such? Was anyone even keeping track except her, anyway? - made her nostalgic.

Though, if she was being frank, it also had her a bit narked.

It had been, what, three months since Sophie and Nate had said goodbye to the Robin Hood life? When they hadn't heard anything from the remaining team members after the first month, Sophie hadn't thought much of it. After all, Nate had put his finger on it with _"I'd say, call if you need anything, but you never, never need anything." _Sophie could also easily envision the trio, despite nervousness at their new independence, deliberately convincing themselves not to call the "parents" over little things. She'd even appreciated the clean break, to a certain extent, since she and Nate had spent that first month off the job sailing around the Mediterranean and - achemm - yes, sailing. Lots of sailing.

The second month of no contact had made her wonder. Not even an email from Hardison or a prank call from Parker? She certainly hadn't expected a peep out of Eliot, but radio silence from the other two had surprised her. When she'd taken a break from the crew they'd done nothing _but_ bombard her with phone calls. Did they really need no suggestions for successful grifting? No pep talks? No relationship advice?

That brought them to this, the third month, almost exactly twelve weeks since she and Nate had left the brew pub and the Black Book in the hands of their protegés. Still nothing. No calls. No emails. No carrier pigeons.

Three months was simply rude.

Either that or something horrible had happened, and she didn't even want to entertain that possibility.

The mixed emotions of the line of thinking settled somewhat as she took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet smell of cut grass. She leaned back on her arms, tilting her face upward and catching sun on her chin around the brim of her hat.

"Speaking of Portland," she said casually, "I was thinking maybe we could swing by in the next couple of weeks."

Nate raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Swing by? Is it on the way somewhere?"

"Oh, you know what I mean. Let's visit. It's been an appropriate amount of time, hasn't it? Besides, I ought to check in on the theatre and my actors… they're being taught the Meisner technique for all I know. Horrendous, horrendous acting method…"

"Sophie…" Nate's voice took on that insufferable know-it-all tone that drove her mad. Unfortunately, she also found it insanely attractive. Ah, life's paradoxes. "They're fine."

"What? Who?"

Nate rolled his eyes and scooted closer to her on the blanket, wrapping an arm around her waist. "You know exactly who I'm talking about. Stop trying to grift me into checking up on them."

She huffed. "You're ridiculous and insufferable, you know that?"

"So you tell me. About every five minutes."

"And yet it doesn't ever seem to sink in."

He placed a soft kiss on her cheek that sent little chills down her back despite the midday heat. He was foolish if he thought that would be enough to distract her, but she did have to clear her head a bit before continuing.

"Of course I'd _like_ to see Parker and Hardison and Eliot," she said, satisfied that she wasn't exactly admitting to any sort of subtle manipulation yet still staying on the subject. "Don't tell me you wouldn't, too. We could even hand-deliver their invitations, get some catering advice from Eliot…"

"Invitations and catering? What for?"

Casting a slow, sideways look at her fiancé, she blinked and removed her sunglasses. "What for? Our wedding, of course. What else?"

"Our wedding? Why? It's not going to take more than fifteen minutes."

"I'm sorry… come again?"

"What? We walk into the courthouse, we sign the paper, we walk out, we go out to dinner. Maybe twenty minutes, if there's a line."

"Oh my goodness." Sophie's voice came out like liquid steel. "Oh my… bloody hell." She wriggled out of his hold and stood up, brushing off her dress with the ferocity of a Wimbledon match. "You really don't have a romantic bone in your body, do you, Nathan Ford?"

He was looking up at her with high eyebrows and upturned hands, the very picture of innocent confusion. That made her want to slap him even more. "What?"

"That. That right there. That complete lack of consideration. Is that the image of our wedding day that you've been walking around with in your _brilliant_ brain? We walk into a courthouse and sign on the bloody dotted line and _go out to dinner?_"

"Sophie, it's not a - "

"Not a big deal? Is that what you were about to say? Because, for your sake, I hope that isn't what was about to come out of your mouth." She snatched up the espadrille wedges that she'd kicked off beside the blanket and jammed her right foot into one. The other one she gestured with, punctuating her acidic words. "We are getting _married_, Nate. And, I suppose this is news to you, but I'd like to do it properly!"

"Sophie, it's just a legal hoop. What's a piece of paper really going to change?"

It was like he was quoting from a little book called _Things to Never, Ever Say to Women_. Classic Nate Ford.

"How did you ever manage to land Maggie?" she hissed.

An ugly thought drifted through her mind that she immediately wanted to take back, but there it was: Maggie had been his first marriage, his first love, the mother of his child. Sophie was the second, the also-ran, the consolation prize. You didn't cut the cake with your consolation prize… you took her to the courthouse.

She felt hot tears collecting behind her eyes, but she angrily turned her head away before he could see. "If this is how you feel," she managed, "then why even bother proposing?" She pulled on the other espadrille, snatched her handbag, and stalked her way to the nearest pedestrian path.

Just fantastic. Absolutely brilliant. Eliot, Parker, and Hardison apparently didn't need her or even care enough to _check in_, and Nate seemed intent on proving that, despite the glorious cocoon they'd been wrapped up in for three months, he could still be such a heartless bastard. Damn sexy and brilliant, but such a bastard.

All right, maybe that was taking it a bit far. He loved her. She knew he did. But did he have to be such an idiot about it all the bleeding time?

Sophie fished around in the handbag and yanked out her phone, which she promptly started dialing. She needed to vent. She needed to talk to someone, _anyone_, before she exploded.

She pressed "send" and listened as the other end of the line rang eight times before going to voicemail.

_"It's Tara. Leave a message."_

"Damn." She glanced down at her list of contacts, dialed the next number.

_"Wheeeeeee!" _exclaimed another voicemail box. _"You know what to dooooooo!"_

The next voicemail didn't even have a recorded message. "The person you are trying to reach is not available," a woman's monotone informed her. "Please leave a message after the tone."

"Come _on_," muttered Sophie, queuing up the final number.

She had her reasons for leaving Hardison for last. Hardison… well, Hardison was sweet. Hardison was earnest. Frankly, Hardison was too understanding. He would try to see things from Nate's point of view and encourage her to do all of the things _she_ would ordinarily be advocating. Parker and Eliot would listen, maybe comment, and then move on. Sophie could vent to them without dragging them in, maybe get a little unfiltered logic as advice. Hardison, on the other hand, would make it his personal mission to help figure things out. It didn't seem fair to burden him like that.

Then again, the cheeky little hacker hadn't called in three months. Maybe he deserved to be burdened, just a little bit.

She dialed.


	9. Chapter 9

_Sorry it's a little late today. It's been a CRAZY week. Hope you enjoy it, anyway! (And thank you to everyone who left such nice reviews this past week. You make me smile like a total goofball.) _

* * *

**Chapter 9**

There were three available exits from the embassy. As Parker pivoted to break into a sprint, she had to make the split-second decision of which one to head toward.

One: The way she'd come in - the front entrance. The straightest shot, but with the most guards.

Two: The way she'd been headed - the wing of offices with the personnel badge reader-enabled lock. Fewer guards, but it could take precious seconds to swipe in, and they might have her before she opened the door.

Three: The way she'd passed up - the employees side entrance. Just one guard, but oodles of cameras. Plus, she'd have to get down the stairs, and those had access from a few different floors with any number of unknown variables.

A choice between three imperfect solutions. Her adrenaline spiked, and she almost threw her head back to let out a crazy laugh.

She lived for this.

Door number one, she decided. The simplest, shortest solution. High risk, but with speed and surprise on her side, it made the most sense. She burst into motion toward it.

Thirty feet. Twenty five feet. Twenty feet.

The security guys manning the metal detector turned to stare at her.

Fifteen feet.

One of the guards standing near the door also looked up, and shouted, "Hey!"

Ten feet.

Two more guards near the door stepped in front of it, cutting off her direct path.

Five feet. So close.

A clatter of snaps as guns came out of holsters, clicks as safeties were taken off and chambers loaded.

Parker could feel her heartbeat in her throat. She could practically reach out and touch the guards at the front door. Instead, she crouched mid-stride, letting her momentum carry her as she slid forward on the soles of her flats. She extended her right leg to sweep the feet of the two guards on the right. She still had speed. If she moved fast enough, she told herself, then they couldn't touch her. That was how she did things.

Then again, she didn't usually run _toward_ the people trying to catch her. That was Eliot's job.

Oh, Eliot. He was going to kill her if she got out of this. Right after Hardison lectured her ear off. Right after she gave them both the world's most enormous hugs and said she was sorry.

"Brigitte! Wait!" came a voice from behind her. Feminine and familiar, but with a confident edge that Parker had only just heard for the first time thirty seconds ago. Charlotte Dahl. "Morgan," or whatever her name was.

_Who the heck is Brigitte? _wondered Parker as her ankle connected with those of the first guard. He fell, hard, on his rear end.

She never connected with the second guard, though, because someone reached under her armpits mid-swing and flipped her over. Her face and chest got pressed forcefully into the tile floor.

Two more guards threw their weight on her legs and back as she struggled. Someone pushed hard on the back of her head while another guard yanked her arms behind her and jammed cold handcuffs onto her wrists. By the time the flurry of movement subsided, she couldn't even wiggle her pinky finger.

The response time of these embassy guards had improved since her last visit. Maybe she should have gone with Door Two or Door Three…

_No, _she sighed internally. There wasn't any way she could have known. Any break for it had its risks. She'd just gotten…

She could barely comprehend it; she'd just gotten _caught_.

What was it she had said to Hardison back during that job in Dubai? _"You slow me down, you kill me!"_

His response had meant more to her than he'd probably understood. _"You had to be quick because you were alone," _he'd said._ "If you get caught, that's it. I get it. But you're not alone anymore. You have a team. You have me. And I got you. I got you, girl."_

But not this time. This time she'd been all alone, and she hadn't been quite fast enough.

An awful taste rose in the back of her throat. This was it. She'd been caught. Nabbed. Pinched. With no Eliot on comm, no Hardison waiting in the van. No Nate with a plan, no Sophie with a lie and disguise.

"Hey!" said that voice of the traitor woman again. It was getting closer. Parker heard squeaks as the bright white sneakers they'd procured for "Charlotte Dahl's" disguise crossed the floor. "Hey. Gentlemen. Let her go, please."

"Ma'am," said the man holding Parker's head down. "I'm going to need to you back away. Everyone, make space."

"For the love of…" Charlotte/Morgan muttered something under her breath in a way that reminded Parker of Eliot for a fleeting moment. "Dave. Come over here, please."

More footsteps approached. "Mo, you know this girl?" said the voice of the stocky guy who had inadvertently revealed Charlotte/Morgan's two-faced treachery.

"Yes. She's a _cousin_ of mine, okay? Could you please flash your ID or something?"

"And… do what?"

Charlotte/Morgan's voice was flat, yet somehow scathing. "And get her out of those cuffs, Dave. I said she's a _cousin_."

What the heck was this crazy woman talking about? In no universe could they have been cousins. It would be absolutely impossible for Parker to have come from the same gene pool as this amazon woman. No way "Dave" was going to buy it.

"Oh - _oh!_ You mean a - right. Sorry. Yeah, I'm on it." Dave rustled around in his clothes for a second, then took a few steps closer to Parker and her counterweights.

Whatever his ID said, it seemed to have the desired effect. The guard sprawled across the small of her back was the first to shift, then the one on her legs. The guy pushing down on her skull, though, hesitated.

"You saw what she tried to do," he said.

"What?" said Charlotte/Morgan in that dry tone. "Leave the embassy?"

"Take out my colleagues!"

"Please. The poor woman slipped."

The pressure of the hand on Parker's head increased slightly. "She was sprinting out of here. She could have planted a bomb and been trying to leave the scene."

"In that case, maybe you should be sweeping the building."

"And detaining the suspect." Man, Eliot would have been proud of this guy's protocol.

"Look, buddy, you saw Dave's badge," said Charlotte/Morgan. "Heck, I'll go get mine out of storage, if you want. Either way, this woman is now under protective custody. Let her go, or I'm taking this to Carson McMaster."

McMaster. The supposed mark of this "job," and, _if_ Charlotte/Morgan had been telling the truth, an attaché at the embassy. Well, good to know he actually existed. But, had Charlotte/Morgan just said that _she_ had a badge? And the way she'd said his name… like she actually _knew _the guy. This just got better and better…

Parker sighed into the floor.

"She doesn't leave this building until we sweep, got it?" said the guard, and then the pressure he was exerting finally lifted. Parker's head felt light as a balloon without it.

"Fine." The squeaking of Charlotte/Morgan's sneakers closed the distance in a second, and then those badly-fitting blue jeans were kneeling beside Parker. "The key to the handcuffs?" A pause. "Please?"

A ring of keys tinkled. The cuffs were unlocked and pulled away. Parker's arms flopped unceremoniously to the tile, but she didn't try to stop them. Instead, she closed her eyes and lay there for a moment.

Again, a choice between two imperfect situations. What a day.

One: Get arrested and processed. Maybe be given a phone call to alert the boys of what was going on, but maybe not. Getting arrested in foreign countries, even by your own government, was never an ideal situation. And, as soon as they took her prints, they'd all know exactly who she was. No one would take chances with world-famous thief Parker in custody.

Two: Go with whatever game Charlotte/Morgan was playing now. Was she grifting these guys just like she'd grifted Parker, Eliot, and Hardison? What was she after? Why had she brought Parker all the way the Paris?

The first option was known. Parker could predict almost exactly how it would go, barring some miracle. The second option… the problem with it was that she didn't know anything. Charlotte/Morgan had talked Parker's way out of handcuffs and out from under a scrum, but one of Hardison's favorite sayings came to mind: out of the frying pan and into the fire.

_I hate being an egg_, Parker mused.

The problem with option one was that it left virtually no possibility of escape. But Parker could see a glimmer of a chance, if she was released to this woman. Eliot had taught them all some things, and he'd taught Parker the most. She couldn't fight off four embassy security guards on her own, maybe, but she could take a grifter.

She decided. _First opportunity I see, I'm out of here. _And, this time, she'd just do it the old-fashioned way and jump out a window, for Pete's sake.

Strange hands clasped gently under her arms, and her body began to lift from the floor. She opened her eyes and turned her head - which hurt her neck because of how it had been jammed sideways against the tiles - to look into Charlotte/Morgan's face. Parker frowned, trying to communicate with her expression:

_You don't fool me, lady. I don't know what's going on here, but you really stepped in it. When I get out of here, I'm going to find your collection of childhood stuffed animals and round them up, and then I'm going to arrange them for a ceremonial bonfire. And I'm going to dance around it, eating all the cereal I can fit in my stomach. That's a lot, by the way. It's going to be a big, long, super cute bonfire. Consider yourself warned._

"Can you stand?" asked Charlotte/Morgan, appearing not to have received any of Parker's telepathic threat.

In response, Parker brought her legs up under her and shifted her weight onto them.

Charlotte/Morgan kept supporting Parker under the left arm but directed her attention to Dave, who was standing off to one side looking uncomfortable. "Can we go to your office, please?"

After glancing at the security guards, who were all assembled next to the metal detector now, Dave said, "Yeah. Sure thing. I'll swipe you in."

"Thank you."

Dave scrambled ahead of them to the door with the scanner that Parker had planned to use with her lifted personnel badge, swiping his own. The light on it switched from red to green, reminding Parker of breaking into the vault during the failed job that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. If only she'd just listened to Eliot and let it go.

_"Parker, grow up!" _His words rattled around in her mind again.

It had made her so upset when he'd said it, but maybe he'd been right. She'd been so stupid to come alone. She'd been so… childish. Was that how everyone saw her - as an overgrown kid? Could she blame them?

The sting of rising tears blossomed behind her eyes. By the time Charlotte/Morgan had steered her through the door, her vision was blurry with them.

* * *

As they settled into Dave's office, Morgan noticed that something had changed in Parker's face. The defiance that had shone in her gaze while she was being helped off of the lobby floor had, in the span of a minute, melted into what looked like despair, an emotion that, on Parker, was honestly disconcerting. The thief had now folded herself onto Dave's swiveling desk chair, hugging her knees to her chest as the seat rotated in a lazy circle.

Morgan could have throttled Dave for calling out at her across the lobby, and for using her _real name_, no less. Her stomach had plummeted so quickly when she'd seen the realization in Parker's features that she'd nearly been overcome with nausea. There'd gone her only ally, just like that, all because Dave and his terrible judgment had been hanging around the embassy in a stroke of incredibly bad luck. Seriously, what were the chances of her handler loitering in the lobby? Didn't he have intelligence to be analyzing or other clandestine officers to be managing?

In the day's second surprise, Parker had made a run for it instead of playing it cool and just _walking_ out of the building. But, as Morgan thought about it now, the choice began to make more sense. From what Morgan knew about Parker, the thief didn't really talk her way out of situations; she escaped from them. Her first instinct was flight - apparently with heavy dose of _fight_, too, since she'd pretty much slide-tackled that first guy at the door. Morgan could also see how, from Parker's position at that point, she herself would have been seen as a threat. You didn't casually walk away from someone who'd just conned you.

Well, maybe you did if you were expecting to be conned. But poor Parker had been blindsided.

"Hey, Dave?" said Morgan as he swept some trash off of his desk. The small action didn't do much to improve the office's overall appearance; it looked like a vending machine had exploded in here. "Could you get Brigitte some water, please? I could do with some coffee, too, if you don't mind."

Dave glanced between her and Parker. "Yeah," he said. "Of course. I'll be right back." Grabbing a fistful of plastic wrappers off of a filing cabinet, he slipped into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

Morgan listened for the fading of his footsteps, then scooted her folding chair toward Parker.

"Parker. Hey. We've got maybe two minutes before he comes back. I need you to listen to me."

Parker's eyes peeked up over her knees, her brows knit together. "Forget it," she mumbled.

"Parker, seriously, we don't have time to mess around. Your name is Brigitte, okay? Brigitte - uh - Brigitte Denis."

"Lemme guess," said Parker dully. She raised the rest of her head, but her blond hair still formed curtains on side of her face. "I'm your cousin."

Oh, thank God, she'd been listening earlier. "Yes. Yes, you're my 'cousin.' That means you're my asset. I've brought you here to give me some kind of intelligence in exchange for protection."

Parker blinked and reached up to swipe the back of her hand over her eyes. Her mouth quirked as she visibly considered something. "Oh," she said after a moment. "I guess that does makes sense."

"What?"

"You're CIA. Yeah. Wow. Now I get it." She paused, then pointed at Morgan with a finger. "Eliot's going to murder you when he figures this out."

Morgan didn't need much help imagining that. The myriad ways in which Eliot Spencer might dispose of her had become a recent recurring nightmare.

"Yes, and I fully expect him to, but that comes later. Right now, I really need you to do what I tell you."

"Or what?" asked Parker. She shrugged and tucked her head against her knees again.

They did _not_ have time for this weird pity party. Morgan reached for Parker's shoulders and shook her. "Parker, look, there is prison, and then there is indefinite CIA detention. I need you to focus, or you can guess where you and I are going to end up."

Parker's leg's flopped off of the chair like a doll's, revealing her face again. She slumped against the backrest, but her eyes cleared a little. "What are you talking about? Why would _you_ be detained?"

Morgan reached for her throat, where her thin silver chain and its tiny circular charm dangled. She knew that she fiddled with it when she was nervous, even knew how to use that to her advantage when she was playing a role. Right now, though, she didn't care. She _was _nervous. Desperate. "Because I told you the truth about McMaster," she said. "But he's not just an attaché. He's the station director of the CIA in France - my boss. And the moment he figures out that I'm trying to expose his ties to extremists, I disappear just like you."

What was probably only five seconds in reality seemed to stretch on forever, as Parker processed what Morgan had told her. "How do I know I can trust you?" she finally asked.

An ironic laugh bubbled up in Morgan's throat, but she forced it down. "Honestly, you don't. I wouldn't trust me, either."

One of Parker's eyebrows quirked, and what looked like the ghost of a smile touched her lips. "At least that sounded like the truth."

Relief spread like a warm wave through Morgan's body. "Just follow my lead," she said, "and as soon as we're out of here, I'll give you all the truth you can handle."

"Mmm… deal." Inching up in her seat, the thief straightened her back and crossed her arms. "But, if you're conning me this time, I won't wait for Eliot."

Morgan swallowed. Wonderful. A new guest star for her nightmares. "… Duly noted."


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

It occurred to Sophie as her call connected that, while it might be just past noon in London, it was barely five a.m. in Portland. Of course, Hardison had probably been up all night playing his fantasy people game, so that wasn't a good enough excuse for screening her call.

Thus, after six or seven rings, she'd determined that there must be some sort of _I Hate Sophie_ movement in full swing. She was about to hang up before triggering Hardison's overly-cheery voicemail message, but then his _actual_ voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Hardison!" she nearly shouted. _Success!_

The other end of the line was silent for a moment. Was he wondering how he'd made the mistake of picking up her call? Oh, was she going to let him have it. "Ah," he finally said. Something about even the single syllable seemed forced, though, throwing up an instant red flag. "Ms.… eh… Ms. Delacourt. What perfect timing."

Sophie frowned, then almost dropped the phone. "Bloody - Hardison, are you… are you in the middle of a con?"

"Yes, ma'am, exactly. You see, we were just here in the _banlieue_, asking around about Gérard Nejem, and, well, I do apologize. I know that you would have preferred to remain anonymous, but our friend here was insisting that we speak in French…"

All right, there was quite a lot going on that statement, so she began by addressing the most obvious. "You don't speak French, Hardison."

"Precisely, ma'am. Neither of us do, though Eliot conveniently left that out when we began. You can see our predicament. So, as much as we have tried to respect our confidentiality agreement, perhaps you wouldn't mind speaking to the man in charge?"

Sophie blinked hard, pushing the hurt and flashes of anger at Nate's insensitivity about their wedding into the back of her mind as she stepped into the moment, replaying Hardison's words so that she could grasp everything he'd tried to get across.

There was a reason that she was one of the best grifters in the business: successfully becoming another person had everything to do with using what was authentic about your personal experience, yet never letting enough of yourself leak out as to do damage. A successful actor - a successful grifter - was someone who could process and compartmentalize life while maintaining a connection to each compartment for when it was needed. It was a delicate dance. If you went so far as to completely wall yourself off from certain compartments - say, like Eliot seemed to have done with chunks of his past - then you lost your ability to harness those experiences and emotions for the con. It was dangerous for someone like Eliot to reach into those forbidden places without having built up a tolerance and a working relationship with them, because too much at once could overload and undo a person. Sophie imagined that Eliot had once been an open, winning young man, but the things that he had seen and done were not for later use; he'd locked them far, far away. Maybe that made him a better hitter, but it limited him as a grifter.

The same was true of Nate in many ways, particularly when it came to Sam. Nate had sought escape at the bottom of a bottle, laying a brick in the wall between himself and the memory of his son with every sip of scotch. Their jobs with children had revealed Nate's inability to cope with opening a door in that wall, his spirals of unnecessary risk revealing that all he could do was tear at the bricks with his bare hands, leaving his fingers bloodied and inviting an unpredictable collapse. Sophie sensed that the same patterns had been etched in Nate's mind with regard to the murder of Jimmy Ford, as well. It worried her.

In any event, it all served to show that, while Nate and Eliot_ could_ grift, they weren't grifters. That wasn't what they did, couldn't be what they did. A real grifter could transform into anyone; Nate and Eliot had limits to where they could go without endangering themselves. As for Hardison, he was too open; he didn't compartmentalize _enough._ And Parker's limitations were with processing in the first place, knowing what to do with emotions when they bubbled up within her. To the thief's credit, however, she had come a long, long way.

Grifting was a dicey business to be sure. Sophie had, on multiple occasions, lost sight of who _she _really was in the midst of her aliases. That was, for her, the greatest danger - not being overloaded and torn apart or shutting out parts of her experiences, but getting lost within the compartments, forgetting that they were tools and not true lives on their own. She lost sight of what lay between them.

But not today, not right now. In this moment, she deftly packaged up her indignation and her aching and glided into alert and collected calm. There was no losing oneself when her team needed her. When her family needed her.

"Of course," she said to Hardison. "Now, hand the phone over, but don't be too eager. Look suitably chastised. I've just ripped you apart for spilling the beans. Do Eliot and Parker know what you're doing?"

"Um, no, not exactly, ma'am. I was unaware you'd be calling. But, how fortunate that you did." Hardison's voice was tight, but some of that might have been from relief.

"Oh, and Hardison?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"You _will_ explain this to me as soon as you're clear. That's not a question or a request."

She could hear him take a deep breath. "Of course, ma'am. That won't be a problem. Thank you."

What on earth had they gotten themselves into?

* * *

The handgun barrel resting against Hardison's temple had gone from cool to warm, probably because he was sweating like his insides were filled with glowing coals. "Thank you," he told Sophie. He meant it. Someone up there was looking out for him, if Sophie had chosen this very moment to call. Talk about timing.

_"Look suitably chastised,"_ she'd said. It wasn't much of a challenge to go from fearing for your life to looking like you feared for your career, so he didn't have to do much with his face. Swallowing, he slowly lifted the phone away from his ear and extended it to the man holding their lives in the balance.

The Frenchman, who, as they had learned, apparently spoke English, took the device with a deceptively polite, "Thank you." He withdrew his gun from where it pressed into Hardison's skin, though he tucked his elbow against his hip to keep the barrel trained on them. "Allo?" And thus the conversation began.

Seconds stretched into minutes as the man jabbered away in French. Hardison was getting pretty tired of watching everyone else have exchanges in other languages, but at least whatever Sophie was saying appeared to have the guy in a relatively good mood. At one point, he even laughed, put the safety on his gun, and tucked it back into his pants before beginning to walk around the smoky room like a girl chatting with her BFF.

Hardison chanced a glance at Eliot. The hitter raised one eyebrow an iota, but otherwise didn't react. He was watching the movements of the man in charge with the intensity of a hawk preparing to swoop down and snatch up an unsuspecting rodent.

Fine. That was his job. Watch the man, look for an opening, if needed. But, for real? Eliot couldn't spare an expression that remotely said, _"Hey, thanks for saving our asses. Quick thinking there, buddy."_

That'd be the day.

"Bien sûr, madame," said the head honcho guy after about five minutes of conversation. "I will tell them. And we will speak soon." He hung up.

Oh, good Lord. Sophie had this guy on a hook. God bless that woman.

Hardison almost sank to his knees in relief. He was going to need something stronger than orange soda after this.

"It would seem," said the man, his accent turning 'seem' into 'see-muh,' "that we will be able to reach an arrangement." He gestured to the poker table with Hardison's phone. "Come. Have a seat."

At long last, the men standing around the room lowered their weapons, as well. Eliot sucked in a long breath through his nose, the only indication that he might be as relieved as Hardison, and led the way to the table. He took the chair next to the man in charge. Hardison slid into the next one over.

"So," said the Frenchman, and he carelessly tossed over the phone. It bounced off of the table awkwardly, landing on the floor. Hardison began reaching for it, but Eliot's hand clamped onto his wrist like a steel manacle.

"So," repeated Eliot, face unreadable. His focus was completely on the man, but his grip didn't waver, essentially pinning Hardison in his chair.

The Frenchman smirked a little. The superiority in the expression reminded Hardison immediately of Nate. "Your employer, Madame Delacourt, offered me the details of your purpose here. You thought you could have my information for free, eh?"

"Ms. Delacourt - " began Eliot.

But Hardison interrupted him. The hitter didn't know jack about what Hardison and Sophie had going on here. Of the two of them, there was one obvious person to carry on the con. "It meant an increase in our profit margin," he said. "Worth a try, right?"

"Not when it almost got our heads blown off," Eliot growled. His hand tightened, and Hardison thought his wrist might snap beneath it.

One day, Hardison was going to smack Eliot Spencer right in the face. That day might be today.

"I must admit," the Frenchman continued. "Madame Delacourt has flattered me by sending two celebrities. Alec Hardison… one of the world's most dangerous hackers, she tells me. I have my eye on you. And Eliot Spencer… " A glint appeared in the man's eye that unsettled Hardison's already knotted-up stomach. "Yes, you are quite famous. And quite valuable, if delivered alive to the right bidder."

_Oh, wonderful. So much for being out of the woods._

Eliot's features remained impassive. "I'm the right bidder," he replied, as evenly as if he'd been commenting on the man's shoes. "Whatever the going rate is, I can top it. And not kill all your little friends here, as a bonus."

That made the Frenchman grin, throw back his head, and laugh. "Oh, no need, no need, Mister Spencer. Your employer has already promised me a sum that will make it worth my while to let you go, unscathed. Apparently you are in the private bodyguard business these days. What a waste of your prolific talents."

_Thank you, Sophie_.

"Of course, I wonder what the need is for Mister Hardison here."

_Dammit, Sophie!_

"Technical support," said Hardison, before Eliot could mess things up with some uninformed bullcrap. "Once we have the information we're looking for, someone has to track this sucker down, ya dig? And that means credit cards, cameras, hacking international personnel servers - "

"You'll have to excuse my associate," interjected Eliot. "He still doesn't get that other people really don't give a rip."

The Frenchman laughed again. This time, Eliot joined him.

Hardison glowered.

"Don't worry about him," said Eliot. "He isn't known for his sense of humor."

_Not known for my… oh no you didn't._ Hardison felt his eye twitch. That smack was definitely on today's menu. "Ms. Delacourt told you why we're here, so you must know who we're looking for."

The Frenchman nodded, eyes crinkled a little bit as if he was suppressing another smile. "Yes. Mister Spencer also mentioned Gérard Nejem in our earlier conversation. It is what made me rather… uncomfortable. You see, Monsieur Nejem tends to run with a rather dangerous crowd. He is also a man who appreciates his privacy."

"Appreciated," said Eliot. "Nejem's dead."

A murmur went through the room. The Frenchman blinked twice, but recovered quickly.

"Really? There had been a rumor, but I was unaware."

Eliot crossed his arms. "Bull."

"Excuse me?"

"It's an expression. Means you're full of crap."

"Yes, I know what the expression means," said the man, an edge in his voice. "But I fail to see its applicability."

"Really?" Eliot stood up. Suddenly there were guns pointed at them again, but the hitter ignored them. "Don't tell me you don't know what's going on within the boundaries of your own neighborhood. Our intel places Nejem here at least three times a week in recent months. If a regular visitor like that stops showing up to see his would-be terrorist friends, I think you know all about it. You keep strict tabs on the Libyans, because an insurrection within the camp could upset the balance of power, lose you all your wayward, unemployed customers with their booze-driven bets." Eliot gestured to the door that separated the back room from the main room of the Café du Loup. "I think you know all about Nejem, his friends, and their planned attack."

Hardison swept his eyes over the room with Eliot's final comment. None of the men's faces registered recognition. Either they were all really good actors, or they didn't know anything.

The Frenchman (Honestly, why was Hardison calling him that now? He spoke French, but he just as easily spoke Arabic. Whatever. The guy in charge. Him.) shook his head very slowly. "I think, perhaps, you overestimate our information-gathering abilities and our interest in the internal affairs of the refugee population of the _banlieue_. I admit that, yes, I was in fact aware of Nejem's demise. His movements _were_ of interest to us. However, as far as this 'attack' to which you refer, I am sure I do not know what you are talking about. Of course, if you know something we do not, I would be happy to… compensate you for your trouble."

Eliot took in the henchmen with their guns raised, the Frenchman running the show, and finally made eye contact with Hardison. Hardison shrugged, very slightly, to let him know that he believed them.

"My mistake," said Eliot after a second. He turned his attention back to the Frenchman but didn't sit down again. "Tell us what you _do_ know about Nejem, then."

* * *

"Not known for my sense of humor? Really? You're cruisin' for a bruisin', man."

Eliot snorted at the ridiculousness of that statement, not opening his eyes. The hypnotic rocking of the train made it easy to almost shut out the voice of the hacker sitting beside him.

"Seriously, Eliot. What the hell? You almost got us killed in there."

Maybe that was how it had looked to Hardison, but even after the entire room had had them in the crosshairs, Eliot had been ready. There had been a 75% chance that he could knock Hardison out of the leader's line of fire _and_ reach the barrel of the gun in time to wrestle it away. The closeness of the encounter would have deterred the shots of all but the least loyal _Milieu_ soldiers. On the 25% chance that he wasn't quick enough to preempt the bullet, Hardison would have still been outside of its trajectory, and while Eliot would have taken a close-range hit, the probability of it being immediately fatal would still have been low, depending on how quickly he moved and how jumpy the _Milieu_ boss was with his trigger finger.

The point was, they wouldn't have both been killed in that moment. Not unless something had gone strangely, horribly wrong.

How about a little trust?

"Hardison. Believe me. You weren't in any danger."

"Oh no you don't," snapped Hardison. "You're using that voice, that 'I would have protected you' voice. Well, guess what, meathead? I would appreciate it if, sometimes, you inserted your own survival into your calculations. 'Cause, I dunno, you're my _friend_. How about next time, instead of not telling me a damn thing about what you're planning, you just gimme the low-down. Would that be so hard, Eliot? Just open your mouth. It's easy. Look. Blah blah blah blah! Look at that! All you have to do is move your jaw - "

"It turned out okay, didn't it? We got what we were looking for. Sophie did a good job."

"Wha - how'd you know it was Sophie?"

"How many friends do you have, Hardison? How many of them know your number _and_ speak French? Just in case there was more than one - doubtful, but who knows what your gnome people are capable of - how many of them could come up with an elaborate enough lie to get us out of that situation over the phone?"

"Well, when you put it that way," grumbled Hardison, "sounds like a no-brainer. But what if she hadn't called, Eliot? What if it had been just you and me and that room full of guns? You're incredible, man, but you ain't invincible."

"Hardison, I told you I had it under control."

"Then I would like to revisit your definition of under control!" With the outburst came a temporary suspension of other conversations in the train car.

Eliot waited for general chatter to resume, then opened his eyes, one at a time, and slowly fixed them on Hardison. His voice pitched low, he said, "Listen. I need you to - "

_"I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay. I sleep all night and I work all day."_

Hardison stared back at Eliot for a second, letting the ridiculous ringtone repeat. But then he reached into his pocket and withdrew the phone that he'd finally picked up off the floor before they'd left the back room of the Café du Loup. He half turned his back to answer it.

"Hello? Oh, yeah. Hey, Sophie." Hardison threw a glance over his shoulder. "Yeah, thanks for helping us out. We were in a bit of a tight spot. Next time, though, feel free to not promise a man seven-hundred fifty-thousand Euro before the end of the business day. He wouldn't let us leave until I transferred it, and Lord knows I don't have that kind of liquid…. Well, funny story, I used the account numbers of a mark that just _happened_ to still be in my phone. Now I'm going to have to track it all down and - Hm? Oh yeah, mmhmm. Uh… " He rotated back around in his seat, blinking at Eliot. "Yeah, no, she's not… she's not really around right now. Bathroom. Yeah. See, we're - "

Eliot made a quick slicing motion across his neck. "Do not tell her what we're doing," he growled through his teeth.

"Hey, Sophie, hold up one sec, 'kay?" Hardison took the phone from his ear and cupped his left hand over the speaker. "What? Why?" he whispered. "You know, maybe we could use some help. You walking us into death traps is _not_ my idea of a smooth sailing job!"

"What, you want to be the one to tell her that we frickin' lost Parker?"

"She and Nate could help us _find_ Parker."

"Forget it. We are not - "

"We're not what, Eliot? We haven't called them for anything in three months. We left them alone, just like we agreed. But that didn't exactly end in sunshine and daisies, did it?"

Dammit. He'd known this day would come, but he'd hoped to face it with all of the kinks worked out. The last thing Eliot wanted was for Sophie and Nate to feel an obligation to get drawn back into the team's orbit. They had this chance, this incredible chance, to walk away. To marry the person they loved, to buy a house, to have kids… to be normal. To have all the things Eliot knew he'd given up any hope for a long time ago.

But he'd known they wouldn't be able to stay away, not totally. He'd known they'd worry - especially Sophie. He'd put off calling, encouraged Parker and Hardison to do the same. If they could just show "Leverage International" doing its thing with no problems, no reasons for Nate and Sophie to see a need to step in…

Maybe the 75% chance estimate that he could avoid a bullet had been generous. Maybe he couldn't have guaranteed the collective action problem of the soldiers in that room, or the reaction time of the leader. Maybe the situation his Arabic and zero French had walked them into had been more dire than he'd told Hardison or himself.

But admitting that meant admitting that dumb luck and Sophie's call had saved their asses, chalking up the survival of his best friend to _deus ex machina_. The implications of that reality…

No. He would have been fast enough. He had to be. There existed no alternative. For Hardison, he would always be fast enough. He wasn't ever going to let someone die for his mistakes again.

He looked down at his lap. One of his hands was twitching. With a strong, dark thought, he commanded it to be still.

"Tell her Parker's off comm, but you'll have her call Sophie back."

"How in the hell do you plan - "

"We're going to find Parker, Hardison. Hurry up and get off the damn phone."

Sighing, the hacker removed his hand from the device, speaking back into it. "Hey, Sophie. Sorry about that. We'll… we'll call you back."

_We'll call you back,_ thought Eliot._ When this is done._


	11. Chapter 11

_Sorry it's on the shorter side this week. It made sense to end this way. Anyway, happy #FanFictionFriday! Have a super weekend._

* * *

**Chapter 11**

By the time his fiancée returned to their ill-fated picnic spot, Nate had finished both his and Sophie's glasses of prosecco. He was fondling the bottle, considering how much was left inside and whether or not it would give him an adequate buzz if he polished it off, when Sophie's handbag suddenly flew into his vision like a large, leather projectile and knocked it out of his hand. The vessel tumbled over, spilling fizzing, peach-colored liquid all over one corner of the blanket.

"Honestly," said Sophie as she stomped over. "Does the whole world think I'm an idiot?"

He winced. Thirty minutes' worth of her words swimming around his brain, and he still wasn't sure what to say to diffuse her mood. Give him anyone else, and he could always find the perfect way into their head… but not Sophie. It was one of the things that drew him to her - that she made him work for even glimpses into her thinking, always kept him chasing her. There was no one he loved chasing more.

But then came situations like this, disagreements that blindsided him and from which she wouldn't cool off after a couple of hours. He'd seen that flash in her eyes that meant he'd landed a blow under her sultry, confident veneer, and she didn't simply bounce back from those kinds of invasions.

Yet, how exactly was he to know what vulnerabilities lay beyond when she barely invited him to see those true, deepest parts of her? The past three months of their engagement had been a haze of happiness; it had seemed that they couldn't get enough of each other. But how much of the _real _Sophie was he actually getting? Sometimes he wasn't sure he knew - really knew - her at all. She never let down her guard or bothered to tell him what she was really thinking. No, it was always neurolinguistic programming and suggestive looks, like he was some sort of mark.

She wanted a big, fancy to-do of a wedding? All she had to do was say so. Instead, she'd already cast him as the emotionally-impaired villain. Again.

But, bringing up Sophie's fear of intimacy at this moment wasn't going to draw her back from the indignant place to which she'd retreated. "Look, Sophie," he began, getting to his feet. As good a place as any to start: with words. "You know I didn't - "

"Parker's in the bathroom? Really? Do they think I'm that bloody gullible? I taught them everything they know!"

"Parker's in the… Sophie, what's going on?"

She stopped at the edge of the blanket, tapping her phone against the palm of her left hand in agitation. "I just had a very interesting conversation with Hardison."

"Hardison called you?" So, the dam had finally broken. An interesting time for it, and after a longer period than maybe Nate had anticipated, but who was he to complain? Sophie's mind was somewhere else now - somewhere she might actually let him go.

She shook her head and waved a hand, as if to say, _'Stop asking stupid questions.'_

He blinked, but then put it together. "… You called Hardison."

"Well I tried calling everyone else, didn't I? But _no_, no one wants to talk to Sophie. Nobody cares about Sophie unless they're stuck in the middle of a sodding con!"

"Sophie."

"Don't you use that tone with me," she hissed, eyes narrowing. "You're on your own patch of incredibly thin ice."

Hm. Perhaps it would take more to put her off this wedding thing than he'd thought.

"Sophie," he tried again. This time, he softened his voice and slowly held up one of his hands. "Tell me what happened."

She crossed her arms. "So you can tell me that I'm overreacting?"

"So that I can help. Come on, Soph. We're a team."

"Interesting choice of words." She looked away from him, but, after a second, spoke again. "Yes, after trying Tara, Parker, and Eliot, I called Hardison. To complain about you, obviously."

"Obviously," Nate deadpanned.

"But instead of being in bed, or up playing one of his games, he was in the middle of a con. A con that, apparently, required someone fluent in French. Honestly, I'm almost certain that they're actually _in_ France."

She recounted all that Hardison had told her, then began to describe her conversation as 'Ms. Delacourt.'

"This man - Ebrahim, he said his name was, and I'd bet my mother's pearls that he's with the _Milieu_ - was holding Eliot and Hardison at gunpoint, and he wasn't shy about telling me so. He knew their first names, if not their last, obviously spoke English as well… He wanted to know why they had come to his neighborhood looking for some man named Gérard Nejem. I really didn't have much to go on at this point, but Hardison had set me up as his employer, so I did my best."

"And what did you tell him?"

"That Eliot Spencer and Alec Hardison were working for me, and that I was willing to pay generously for their assured safety and information regarding the whereabouts of Monsieur Nejem."

"You used their real names?"

"It probably saved their lives, Nate. That man was going to shoot them like dogs unless I gave him something big and believable. I told him Eliot was my bodyguard. My extremely expensive and valuable bodyguard."

"And what was Hardison?"

Sophie's lips puckered a little in thought. "Hm. I suppose I didn't specify his importance." She did the hand-waving bit again, dismissing that line of inquiry. "Obviously they dealt with that. I called them back once they were on the train, and Hardison was just fine."

"Did he fill you in on the background of the job? You're roped in now."

"That's exactly it," she said. "He didn't explain anything - practically hung up on me, after a painfully obvious whispered conversation with Eliot. And when I asked about Parker, who, as you've no doubt noticed, wasn't mentioned once in all of this, all he could come up with was that she was in the loo. I mean, really. As if I couldn't tell from his cadence and breathing that he was lying. Has he completely forgotten what I do?"

Nate mulled over all of this information before saying or asking anything else. He could understand Sophie's agitation. This, the first contact with the new Leverage team in three months, had necessitated Sophie's involvement but offered no explanation. No mention of Parker, either during the con or the train debrief. Knowing Eliot, Hardison, and Parker - and Nate knew them like no one else in the world - that meant only one thing.

They were in deep trouble.

He dug his phone out of his blazer's inside pocket. "All right, Sophie, find us a cab."

"What?"

"You said they're in France? We can be there in a couple of hours."

"Now, you hold on just a second, Nathan Ford. Tell me what's going on in your head right now. You can't just go all mysterious Mastermind on me."

"Obviously something's very wrong," he said, scrolling through his applications. He tapped the one he was looking for. "With Parker."

"I… yes, I suppose that was my gut feeling, too. But haven't you been saying for three months that they need to learn to sink or swim on their own?"

"Yes, and now we can clearly see that they've sunk. I was afraid of this." More than that, though, he was afraid it might be his fault.

It had been Nate's decision to walk away; Sophie had followed his lead and the all-important romantic gesture. He had been the one to draw Hardison into his plans to steal the Black Book. But he'd refused to reach out since he and Sophie had left, maintained that it would hurt the integrity and confidence of the team to check up on them like a helicopter parent.

But this secrecy, Parker's absence, Eliot and Hardison almost dead at the hands of French mobsters?

Maybe he'd been too quick to leave them alone in the deep end.

No, he'd _absolutely_ been too quick about it. Too myopic. Too focused on what _he_ wanted.

And now this.

_Damn it all._

When he glanced up, he found Sophie staring at him with a mix of surprise and - what was that? - satisfaction, maybe? "What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said, though the sly smile tilting her mouth meant the complete opposite. "I'll hail a cab." The smile growing, she took a few steps toward him and bent over to pick up her discarded handbag. When she straightened, though, her expression had faltered slightly. "Wait a moment. We're almost certain they're in France, but the _Milieu_ operate out of _banlieues_ in many major cities. How are we going to find them?"

It was Nate's turn to smirk as he turned his phone's display toward her.

She gazed at it for a long three count, then fixed him with a decidedly less-satisfied look. "Really? _Really?_ You complete and utter control freak."

He shrugged. "I can see that you're secretly very pleased and, dare I say… grateful?"

"Ugh." She rolled her eyes. "Don't press your luck. I wouldn't get too superior right now, if I were you. Are those their - "

"Earbuds. Yeah."

"And you've had this the whole time? You've been checking up on them and let me worry myself to death in silence?"

His smirk grew. He really should be trying harder to restrain it, but he couldn't help it. "Scout's honor, this is the first time I've used it." Even though he'd practically had to hide the phone from himself to keep it that way. "Oh, and by the way, I _knew_ you were trying to con me into going to see them."

She narrowed her gaze, probably completely unaware of how sexy he found her when she did that. "But they're not moving. Eliot and Hardison are on a train right now."

"Which is only further proof that whatever is going on has to do with Parker, because they weren't using their comms. I guarantee you, though, that the earbuds are back with Hardison's things."

Sophie sighed, shaking her head in evident exasperation. Then, she abruptly threw her arms about his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. "Thank you," she murmured. "Thank you, you utterly pompous arse with a god complex."

Taken aback, Nate stiffened, but after a second relaxed, embracing her gently around the waist. "I love you, Sophie Devereaux. You know that, don't you?"

The squeeze of her arms tightened. "Of course I do. But we… you know we have to talk about this."

It didn't take a mastermind to know what she meant by 'this,' but at least now he'd have a little more time to figure out exactly what to say.

"Yeah. I know."

She slowly extricated herself from his hold and swiped away what might have been a tear on one cheek. "All right," she said. "Well, we'd better get going, then."

He nodded, practically able feel the gears of his mind beginning to turn. "Let's go steal the team."


End file.
